Mark Twain
real name Samuel L. Clemens; American author; b. 1835; d. 1910
Aphorisms Attributed to This Aphorist
21–35 (35)
tiny.ag/ftbq0ees · submitted 1997
Everything human is pathetic. The secret source of humor itself is not joy but sorrow.
tiny.ag/jkl5ti0h · submitted 1997
Facts, or what a man believes to be facts, are delightful... Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please.
tiny.ag/r1bfukdv · submitted 1997
Few things are harder to put up with than a good example.
tiny.ag/nqpwl3vp · submitted 1997
Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn't.
tiny.ag/17uoj5hx · submitted 1997
Forget and forgive. This is not difficult when properly understood. It means forget inconvenient duties, then forgive yourself for forgetting. By rigid practice and stern determination, it comes easy.
tiny.ag/sdmeheo7 · submitted 1997
I am prepared to meet anyone, but whether anyone is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter.
tiny.ag/yh5kxuzq · submitted 1997
Loyalty to petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul.
Mark Twain, (inscription beneath his bust in the Hall of Fame), in Law and Politics
tiny.ag/gymh6otw · submitted 1997
Man is the only animal that blushes -- or needs to.
tiny.ag/ne1vhxlr · submitted 1997
Never tell the truth to those unworthy of it.
tiny.ag/mwkuerjp · submitted 1997
Noise proves nothing. Often a hen who has merely laid an egg cackles as if she had laid an asteroid.
tiny.ag/mwoxawkr · submitted 1997
Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.
tiny.ag/7do2rifh · submitted 1997
The fact that man knows right from wrong proves his intellectual superiority to other creatures; but the fact that he can do wrong proves his moral inferiority to any creature that cannot.
Mark Twain, What is Man?, 1906, in Altruism and Cynicism
tiny.ag/edsop9bf · submitted 1997
The human race has one really effective weapon, and that is laughter.
tiny.ag/byjgwlzg · submitted 1997
The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them.
tiny.ag/h5blv72l · submitted 1997
Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.
21–35 (35)