Each of you, for himself, by himself and on his own responsibility, must speak. And it is a solemn and weighty responsibility, and not lightly to be flung aside at the bullying of pulpit, press, government, or the empty catch-phrases of politicians. Each must for himself alone decide what is right and what is wrong, and which course is patriotic and which isn't. You cannot shirk this and be a man. To decide it against your convictions is to be an unqualified and inexcusable traitor, both to yourself and to your country, let men label you as they may. If you alone of all the nation shall decide one way, and that way be the right way according to your convictions of the right, you have done your duty by yourself and by your country — hold up your head! You have nothing to be ashamed of.
Quotations by ...
Mark Twain (1835-1910) American writer [pseud. of Samuel Clemens]
Laws are sand, customs are rock. Laws can be evaded and punishment escaped, but an openly transgressed custom brings sure punishment.
Humor is the great thing, the saving thing. The minute it crops up, all our irritations and resentments slip away and a sunny spirit takes their place.
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It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world, and moral courage so rare.
In Mark Twain in Eruption: Hitherto Unpublished Pages About Men and Events, ed. Bernard DeVoto (1940)
I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it.
In trying circumstances, urgent circumstances, desperate circumstances, profanity affords a relief denied even to prayer.
We recognize that there are no trivial occurrences in life if we get the right focus on them.
Always acknowledge a fault. This will throw those in authority off their guard and give you an opportunity to commit more.
It is my heart-warm and world-embracing Christmas hope and aspiration that all of us, the high, the low, the rich, the poor, the admired, the despised, the loved, the hated, the civilized, the savage, may eventually be gathered together in a heaven of everlasting rest and peace and bliss, except the inventor of the telephone.
The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them.
Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on or by imbeciles who really mean it.
Principles have no real force except when one is well-fed.
Don't part with your illusions; when they are gone, you may still exist, but you have ceased to live.
The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex overwhelming tasks into small manageable tasks, and then starting on the first one.
Get the facts first. You can distort them later.
Why shouldn't truth be stranger than fiction? Fiction, after all, has to make sense.
The human race has one really effective weapon, and that is laughter.
It may be called the Master Passion, the hunger for self approval.
There ain't no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than to travel with them.
Virtue has never been as respectable as money.
The best way to cheer yourself up is to try to cheer somebody else up.
The man who sets out to carry a cat by its tail learns something that will always be useful and which never will grow dim or doubtful.
Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.
The right word may be effective, but no word was ever as effective as a rightly timed pause.
Each nation knowing it has the only true religion and the only sane system of government, each despising all the others, each an ass and not suspecting it.
You can't reason someone out of something they weren't reasoned into.
When one remembers that we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained.
I thoroughly disapprove of duels. If a man should challenge me, I would take him kindly and forgivingly by the hand and lead him to a quiet place and kill him.
Worrying about something is like paying interest on a debt you don't even know if you owe.
It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare.
The conviction of the rich that the poor are happier is no more foolish than the conviction of the poor that the rich are.
I could never learn to like her, except on a raft at sea with no other provisions in sight.
He liked to like people, therefore people liked him.
Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.
From his cradle to his grave a man never does a single thing which has any FIRST AND FOREMOST object but one -- to secure peace of mind, spiritual comfort, for HIMSELF.
Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do.
The church is always trying to get other people to reform; it might not be a bad idea to reform itself a little, by way of example.
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities, truth isn't.
Let us be thankful for fools. But for them the rest of us could not succeed.
Do something every day that you don't want to do; this is the golden rule for acquiring the habit of doing your duty without pain.
Everyone is a moon and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody.
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There are several good protections against temptations, but the surest is cowardice.
We despise all reverences and all objects of reverence which are outside the pale of our list of sacred things. And yet, with strange inconsistency, we are shocked when other people despise and defile the things which are holy to us.
There are many humorous things in the world, among them the white man's notion that he is less savage than the other savages.
We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it — and stop there; lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot stove-lid. She will never sit down on a hot stove-lid again — and that is well; but also she will never sit down on a cold one anymore.
I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did. I said I didn't know.
Love seems the swiftest, but it is the slowest of all growths. No man or woman really knows what perfect love is until they have been married a quarter of a century.
Mark Twain's Notebook, ed. Albert Bigelow Paine (1935).
Good breeding consists in concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of the other person.
Mark Twain's Notebook, ed. Albert Bigelow Paine (1935).
Each race determines for itself what indecencies are. Nature knows no indecencies; Man invents them.
Mark Twain's Notebook, ed. Albert Bigelow Paine (1935).
Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear -- not absence of fear. Except a creature be part coward it is not a compliment to say it is brave.
Let us so live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.
Few things are harder to put up with than a good example.
It is not best that we should all think alike; it is difference of opinion that make horse races.
One of the most striking differences between a cat and a lie is that a cat has only nine lives.
The holy passion of friendship is so sweet and steady and loyal and enduring in nature that it will last through a whole lifetime, if not asked to lend money.
If he had been a great and wise philosopher, like the writer of this book, he would now have comprehended that Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do and that Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.
He had discovered a great law of human action, without knowing it -- namely, that in order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to attain. If he had been a great and wise philosopher, like the writer of this book, he would now have comprehended that Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do, and that Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do. And this would help him to understand why constructing artificial flowers or performing on a tread-mill is work, while rolling ten-pins or climbing Mont Blanc is only amusement.
Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts.
Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do, play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.