“I know all about audiences, they believe everything you say, except when you are telling the truth.”— Mark Twain, amazon.comTagged: Truth, audience, Crowd, humanity, dumb
“He said that man’s heart was the only bad heart in the animal kingdom; that man was the only animal capable of feeling malice, envy, vindictiveness, revengefulness, hatred, selfishness, the only animal that loves drunkenness, almost the only animal that could endure personal uncleanliness and a filt…”— Mark Twain, amazon.comTagged: Human Nature, heart, Mankind, humanity, Animal Kingdom
“There are many humorous things in the world; among them, the white man's notion that he is less savage than the other savages.”— Mark Twain, amazon.comTagged: White Men, racism, humor, Funny, The World
“Man is a marvelous curiosity. When he is at his very very best he is a sort of low grade nickel-plated angel; at is worst he is unspeakable, unimaginable; and first and last and all the time he is a sarcasm. Yet he blandly and in all sincerity calls himself the 'noblest work of God.'”— Mark Twain, amazon.comTagged: Man, stupidity, Worth, Value, God
“Man is the Reasoning Animal. Such is the claim. I think it is open to dispute.”— Mark Twain, amazon.comTagged: Reason, Man, humanity, Animals, animal
“Now there you have a sample of man’s ‘reasoning powers,’ as he calls them. He observes certain facts. For instance, that in all his life he never sees the day that he can satisfy one woman; also, that no woman ever sees the day that she can’t overwork, and defeat, and put out of commission any ten m…”— Mark Twain, amazon.comTagged: Reason, Man, humanity, Animals, gender
“The joy of killing! the joy of seeing killing done - these are traits of the human race at large.”— Mark Twain, amazon.comTagged: Killing, Murder, Joy, creepy, Human Nature
“But language is a treacherous thing, a most unsure vehicle, and it can seldom arrange descriptive words in such a way that they will not inflate the facts-by help of the readers imagination, which is always ready to take a hand, and work for nothing, and do the bulk of it at that.”— Mark Twain, amazon.comTagged: Language, treachery, vehicle, Communication, Facts
“More men go to church than want to.”— Mark Twain, amazon.comTagged: Man, stupidity, Worth, Value, God
“Be good and you will be lonesome.”— Mark Twain, amazon.comTagged: Lonely, Goodness, morals, Ethics, humanity
“Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't.”— Mark Twain, amazon.comTagged: fiction, Truth, strange, stranger than fiction, Possibility
“His hair was short and parted accurately in the middle, and he had all the look of an American person who would be likely to begin his signature with an initial, and spell his middle name out.”— Mark Twain, amazon.comTagged: American, humor, Funny, american man, Privilege
“That's the difference between governments and individuals. Governments don't care, individuals do.”— Mark Twain, amazon.comTagged: Government, Care, Compassion, sympathy, Understanding
“Monarchies, aristocracies, and religions are all based upon that large defect in your race—the individual's distrust of his neighbor, and his desire, for safety's or comfort's sake, to stand well in his neighbor's eye. These institutions will always remain, and always flourish, and always oppress yo…”— Mark Twain, amazon.comTagged: monarchies, Systems, the system, Religion, Minorities
“How little a thing can make us happy when we feel that we have earned it.”— Mark Twain, amazon.comTagged: Happiness, Hope, earn, Hard Work, hard work pays off
“Every man is a suffering-machine and a happiness- machine combined. The two functions work together harmoniously, with a fine and delicate precision, on the give-and-take principle.”— Mark Twain, amazon.comTagged: self, Self-awareness, Being, creature, Body
“There are those who scoff at the schoolboy, calling him frivolous and shallow: Yet it was the schoolboy who said 'Faith is believing what you know ain't so'.”— Mark Twain, amazon.comTagged: schoolboy, Faith, Reason, realist, Reality
“Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example.”— Mark Twain, amazon.comTagged: humor, Funny, Irony, good example, maturity
“Adam was but human—this explains it all. He did not want the apple for the apple's sake, he wanted it only because it was forbidden. The mistake was in not forbidding the serpent; then he would have eaten the serpent.”— Mark Twain, amazon.comTagged: adam, eve, adam & eve, the forbidden apple, Forbidden
“But as soon as one is at rest in this world off he goes on something else to worry about.”— Mark Twain, amazon.comTagged: Mind, Thoughts, worry, Anxiety, Thinking
“Words are only painted fire, a look is the fire itself. She gave that look, and carried it away to the treasury of heaven, where all things that are divine belong.”— Mark Twain, amazon.comTagged: Words, Power of Words, look, Women, Power
“It does us all good to unbend sometimes.”— Mark Twain, amazon.comTagged: Flexibility, tense, unbend, Think, Goodness
“You can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.”— Mark Twain, amazon.comTagged: depend, Imagination, Vision, Future, Mind
“The world is made wrong; kings should go to school to their own laws, at times, and so learn mercy.”— Mark Twain, amazon.comTagged: kings, the system, Mercy, Learning, Laws
“Human beings can be awful cruel to one another.”— Mark Twain, amazon.comTagged: human beings, humanity, Cruelty, Hate, discrimination
“Right is right, and wrong is wrong, and a body ain’t got no business doing wrong when he ain’t ignorant and knows better.”— Mark Twain, amazon.comTagged: Right, Wrong, humanity, the right, Ignorance
“All right, then, I'll go to hell.”— Mark Twain, amazon.comTagged: Hell, Heaven, resignation, bad boys, damn me to hell
“I am not given to exaggeration, and when I say a thing I mean it.”— Mark Twain, amazon.comTagged: exaggeration, Lies, Truth, Meaning, Honesty
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts.”— Mark Twain, amazon.comTagged: Human Nature, Natural, humanity, cross-culturally, sameness
“Human nature appears to be just the same, all over the world.”— Mark Twain, amazon.comTagged: Human Nature, Natural, humanity, cross-culturally, sameness