Author: Mark Twain Page 9

To create man was a fine and original idea; but to add the sheep was a tautology.

Samuel Clemens (1835 – 1910) author & humorist
Beliefs People

New Year's Day… now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions; next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual.

Samuel Clemens (1835 – 1910) author & humorist
Situations Time

Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please.

Samuel Clemens (1835 – 1910) author & humorist
Communication Facts Language Science/Weather

In the first place God made idiots; that was for practice; then he made school boards.

Samuel Clemens (1835 – 1910) author & humorist
Beliefs Education Fools God Insults Intelligence

Few things are more irritating than when someone who is wrong is also very effective in making his point.

Samuel Clemens (1835 – 1910) author & humorist
Beliefs Communication Opinion

It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence to never practice either of them.

Samuel Clemens (1835 – 1910) author & humorist
America Communication Language Places Speech

If you substitute damn every time you’re inclined to write very your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.

Samuel Clemens (1835 – 1910) author & humorist
Communication Language Reading/Writing

The right word may be effective, but no word was ever as effective as a rightly timed pause.

Samuel Clemens (1835 – 1910) author & humorist
Communication Language Time

It resembles a tortoise shell cat having a fit in a plate of tomatoes.

Samuel Clemens (1835 – 1910) author & humorist
Art Reviews/Criticism

Never put off until tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow.

Samuel Clemens (1835 – 1910) author & humorist
Future Time

An enemy can partly ruin a man, but it takes a good-natured injudicious friend to complete the thing and make it perfect.

Samuel Clemens (1835 – 1910) author & humorist
Friends People Relationships

When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around; but when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.

Samuel Clemens (1835 – 1910) author & humorist
Family Fathers Intelligence Learning Stupidity Wisdom