The highest perfection of politeness is only a beautiful edifice, built, from the base to the dome, of ungraceful and gilded forms… — Mark Twain Copy Share Image
Written things are not for speech; their form is literary; they are stiff, inflexible, and will not lend themselves to happy and… — Mark Twain Copy Share Image
No one is sane, straight along, year in and year out, and we all know it. Our insanities are of varying sorts,… — Mark Twain Copy Share Image
Humor must be one of the chief attributes of God. Plants and animals that are distinctly humorous in form and characteristics are… — Mark Twain Copy Share Image
There are 869 different forms of lying, but only one of them has been squarely forbidden. Thou shalt not bear false witness… — Mark Twain Copy Share Image
As I have said before, I never had any large respect for good spelling. That is my feeling yet. Before the spelling-book… — Mark Twain Copy Share Image
There are three infallible ways of pleasing an author, and the three form a rising scale of compliment: 1, to tell him… — Mark Twain Copy Share Image
We must put up with our clothes as they are - they have their reason for existing. They are on us to… — Mark Twain Copy Share Image
It is human life. We are blown upon the world; we float buoyantly upon the summer air a little while, complacently showing… — Mark Twain Copy Share Image
A crime persevered in a thousand centuries ceases to be a crime, and becomes a virtue. This is the law of custom,… — Mark Twain Copy Share Image
If I can capture truth in its simplest form, beauty will follow like a sledgehammer. — Mark Twain Copy Share Image
O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling… — Mark Twain Copy Share Image
Man is the only slave. And he is the only animal who enslaves. He has always been a slave in one form… — Mark Twain Copy Share Image
What is the real function, the essential function, the supreme function, of language? Isn't it merely to convey ideas and emotions? Certainly.… — Mark Twain Copy Share Image
How superbly brave is the Englishman in the presence of the awfulest forms of danger and death; and how abject in the… — Mark Twain Copy Share Image
There are some books that refuse to be written. They stand their ground year after year and will not be persuaded. It… — Mark Twain Copy Share Image
Dates are hard to remember because they consist of figures; figures are monotonously unstriking in appearance, and they don't take hold, they… — Mark Twain Copy Share Image
The average American's simplest and commonest form of breakfast consists of coffee and beefsteak. — Mark Twain Copy Share Image
A thing long expected takes the form of the unexpected when at last it comes. — Mark Twain Copy Share Image
Sing like no one's listening, love like you've never been hurt, dance like nobody's watching, and live like its heaven on earth. — Mark Twain Copy Share Image
If you had made the acquiring of ignorance the study of your life, you could not have graduated with higher honor than you could… — Mark Twain Copy Share Image
“The Creator sat upon the throne, thinking. Behind him stretched the illimitable continent of heaven, steeped in a glory of light and color; before… — Mark Twain Copy Share Image
A man accustomed to American food and American domestic cookery would not starve to death suddenly in Europe, but I think he would gradually… — Mark Twain Copy Share Image
I never write Metropolis for seven cents because I can get the same price for city. I never write policeman because I can get… — Mark Twain Copy Share Image
The higher animals get their teeth without pain or inconvenience. Man gets his through months and months of cruel torture; he will never get… — Mark Twain Copy Share Image
“As far as I can see, Italy, for fifteen hundred years, has turned all her energies, all her finances, and all her industry to… — Mark Twain Copy Share Image
Begin with the determination to succeed and the work is half done already. — Mark Twain Copy Share Image
Many public-school children seem to know only two dates—1492 and 4th of July; and as a rule they don't know what happened on either… — Mark Twain Copy Share Image
