Dedicatio.com

Quotations for Every Mood



It's time to buy something:

Genealogy -:- Home Audio -:- Horror Books -:- Drawings


Quotations of selected author

Mark Twain

1835 - 1910. True name Samuel Langhorne Clemens. American humorist, satirist, writer, and lecturer, author of "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" and "Adventures of Tom Sawyer".

1. "You can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus."

categories: Reality and Imagination

2. "Wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been."

source: "Following the Equator"

categories: Joy and Sadness

3. "Whenever you find that you are on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect."

categories: Various

4. "When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained."

categories: Human -:- Normality and Madness

5. "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."

categories: Youth and Age -:- Knowledge, Ignorance

6. "When angry count four; when very angry, swear."

categories: Anger

7. "Truth is the most valuable thing we have. Let us economize it."

source: "Following the Equator"

categories: Truth and Falsity

8. "Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities, truth isn't."

source: "Following the Equator"

categories: Truth and Falsity -:- Reality and Imagination

9. "Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts."

categories: Various

10. "Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond; cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education."

categories: Education

11. "Thunder is good, thunder is impressive; but it is lightning that does the work."

categories: Nature and Animals

12. "They did not know it was impossible, so they did it! "

categories: Success and Fame

13. "There are several good protections against temptations, but the surest is cowardice."

source: "Following the Equator"

categories: Bravery and Fear -:- Sin and Conscience

14. "There are many humorous things in the world; among them, the white man's notion that he is less savage than the other savages."

source: "Following the Equator"

categories: History and Nations -:- Human

15. "The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated."

source: (or gen. Ulysses S. Grant)

categories: Life and Death

16. "The only reason why God created man is because he was disappointed with the monkey."

categories: Human -:- Nature and Animals

17. "The holy passion of Friendship is of so sweet and steady and loyal and enduring a nature that it will last through a whole lifetime, if not asked to lend money."

categories: Friendship and Hostility

18. "The difference between the right word and the almost right word is really a large matter - it`s the difference between a lightning bug and the lightning."

categories: Intellect, Judgement -:- Oration and Silence

19. "Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it."

categories: Authority, Government -:- Patriotism

Why not a gift:

Drawings -:- Paintings -:- For Babies -:- Asian Antiques

20. "Of all the animals, man is the only one that is cruel. He is the only one that inflicts pain for the pleasure of doing it."

categories: Nature and Animals -:- Pain and Tears

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

categories: Work and Laziness

22. "Man will do many things to get himself loved, he will do all things to get himself envied."

categories: Envy -:- Love

23. "Life was not a valuable gift, but death was. Life was a fever-dream made up of joys embittered by sorrows, pleasure poisoned by pain, a dream that was a nightmare-confusion of spasmodic and fleeting delights, ecstasies, exultations, happinesses, interspersed with long-drawn miseries, griefs, perils, horrors, disappointments, defeats, humiliations, and despairs - the heaviest curse devisable by divine ingenuity; but death was sweet, death was gentle, death was kind; death healed the bruised spirit and the broken heart, and gave them rest and forgetfulness; death was man's best friend; when man could endure life no longer, death came and set him free."

source: "Letters From the Earth"

categories: Life and Death

24. "Laws are sand, customs are rock. Laws can be evaded and punishment escaped, but an openly transgressed custom brings sure punishment."

categories: Law and Crime -:- Manners and Ethics

25. "Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great."

categories: Success and Fame -:- Talent and Genius

26. "It was wonderful to find America, but it would have been more wonderful to miss it."

categories: History and Nations

27. "If you don't read the newspaper, you are uninformed; if you do read the newspaper, you are misinformed."

categories: Various

28. "Good breeding consists in concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of the other person."

source: "Mark Twain's Notebook"

categories: Manners and Ethics

29. "Forgiveness is the fragrance the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it."

categories: Forgiveness

30. "Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example."

categories: Various -:- Anger

31. "Few of us can stand prosperity. Another man's, I mean."

source: "Following the Equator"

categories: Envy -:- Richness and Money

32. "Everything human is pathetic. The secret source of Humor itself is not joy but sorrow. There is no humor in heaven."

source: "Following the Equator"

categories: Wit and Humor -:- Sorrow and Nostalgia

33. "Every one is a moon, and has a dark side which he never shows anybody."

source: "Following the Equator"

categories: Human

34. "Education consists mainly in what we have unlearned."

source: "Mark Twain's Notebook"

categories: Education

35. "Don't part with your illusions. When they are gone you may still exist but you have ceased to live."

source: "Following the Equator"

categories: Dreams and Desires

36. "Death, the only immortal who treats us all alike, whose pity and whose peace and whose refuge are for all - the soiled and the pure, the rich and the poor, the loved and the unloved."

source: "Mark Twain's Notebook"

categories: Life and Death

37. "Dance like no one is watching. Sing like no one is listening. Love like you've never been hurt and live like it's heaven on Earth."

categories: Life and Death -:- Love

38. "Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear - not absence of fear."

categories: Bravery and Fear

39. "Classic - something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read."

categories: Art and Culture

40. "Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint."

categories: Health and Alcohol

41. "An Englishman is a person who does things because they have been done before. An American is a person who does things because they haven't been done before."

categories: History and Nations

42. "Always tell the truth; then you won't have to remember anything else."

categories: Memory -:- Truth and Falsity

43. "Always do right. This will gratify some people, and astonish the rest."

categories: Justice

44. "Always acknowledge a fault. This will throw those in authority off their guard and give you an opportunity to commit more. "

categories: Defeates and Mistakes -:- Forgiveness

45. "A banker is a fellow who lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining, but wants it back the minute it begins to rain."

categories: Richness and Money


Privacy Policy
Valid XHTML 1.1 Valid CSS!
2007-2009, collected and compiled by Kazimierz Matan
Layout based on template by Darren Hester, DesignsByDarren.com