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More TWAIN
Fleas can be taught
nearly anything
that a
Congressman can.
-What Is Man?
In
religion and politics people's beliefs and convictions are in almost
every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination, from
authorities who have
not themselves examined the
questions at issue but have taken
them at second-hand from other
non-examiners, whose opinions
about them were not worth a brass
farthing.
Heaven goes by favor.
If it went by merit,
you would stay out and
your dog would go in.
- Mark Twain, a Biography
Man is kind enough
when he is not excited
by religion.
- Autobiography of Mark Twain
- A Horse's Tale
So
much blood has been shed by the Church because of an omission from the
Gospel: "Ye shall be indifferent as to what your neighbor's religion
is." Not merely tolerant of it, but indifferent to it. Divinity is
claimed for many religions; but no religion is great enough or divine
enough to add that new law to its code.
the
events of life are mainly small events—they only seem large when we are
close to them. By and by they settle down and we see that one doesn't
show above another. They are all about one general low altitude, and
inconsequential.
- Mark Twain, a Biography
Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.
- Mark Twain's Autobiography
The political and commercial morals of the United States are not merely food for laughter, they are an entire banquet.
- Mark Twain, a Biography
It could probably
be shown by facts and figures
that there is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress.
- Mark Twain in Eruption
I have a religion—but you will call it
blasphemy. It is that there is a God for the
rich man but none for the poor.....Perhaps
your religion will sustain you,will feed
you—I place no dependence in mine. Our
religions are alike, though, in one respect-
-neither can make a man happy when he
is out of luck.
- Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar
- Letter to Orion Clemens, 10/19-20/1865
If
you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite
you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man.
There has never been an intelligent person of the
age orsixty who would consent to live his life over again. His or anyone else's.
- Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar
...I never can think of Judas Iscariot
without losing my temper.
To my mind Judas Iscariot was nothing
but a low, mean, premature, Congressman.
- Letters from the Earth
- "Foster's Case", New York Tribune, 3/10/1873
It
is human life. We are blown upon the world; we float buoyantly upon the
summer air a little while, complacently showing off our grace of form
and our dainty iridescent colors; then we vanish with a little puff,
leaving nothing behind but a memory—and sometimes not even that. I
suppose that at those solemn times when we wake in the deeps of the
night and reflect, there is not one of us who is not willing to
confess that he is really only a soap-bubble, and as little worth the
making.
- Mark Twain's Own Autobiography (North American Review, May 3,1907)
LINKS TO MARK TWAIN QUOTES
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