Quotes by Mark Twain

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.

Now he found out a new thing--namely, that to promise not to do a thing is the surest way in the world to make a body want to go and do that very thing.

The joy of killing! the joy of seeing killing done - these are traits of the human race at large.

he would now have comprehended that work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do, and that play consists of whaterver a body is not obliged to do. And this would help him to understand why construcing artificial flowers or performing on a tread-mill, is work, whilst rolling nine-pins or climbing Mont Blanc is only amusement. There are wealthy gentlemen in England who drive four-horse passenger-coaches twenty or thirty miles on a daily line, in the summer, because the privilege costs them considerable money; but if they were offered wages for the service that would turn it into work, then they would resign.

I am only human, although I regret it.

Human nature appears to be just the same, all over the world

You cannot surprise an individual more than twice with the same marvel

Nothing exists but you. And you are but a thought.

If I were to construct a God I would furnish Him with some way and qualities and characteristics which the Present lacks.

I always take Scotch whiskey at night as a preventive of toothache. I have never had the toothache; and what is more, I never intend to have it.

The only way to keep your health is to eat what you don’t want, drink what you don’t like, and do what you’d druther not.

There is a charm about the forbidden that makes it unspeakably desirable.

Evolution is a blind giant who rolls a snowball down a hill. The ball is made of flakes—circumstances. They contribute to the mass without knowing it. They adhere without intention, and without foreseeing what is to result. When they see the result they marvel at the monster ball and wonder how the contriving of it came to be originally thought out and planned. Whereas there was no such planning, there was only a law: the ball once started, all the circumstances that happened to lie in its path would help to build it, in spite of themselves.

Evolution is the law of policies: Darwin said it, Socrates endorsed it, Cuvier proved it and established it for all time in his paper on The Survival of the Fittest. These are illustrious names, this is a mighty doctrine: nothing can ever remove it from its firm base, nothing dissolve it, but evolution.

I have been scientifically studying the traits and dispositions of the “lower animals” (so-called,) and contrasting them with the traits and dispositions of man. I find the result profoundly humiliating to me. For it obliges me to renounce my allegiance to the Darwinian theory of the Ascent of Man from the Lower Animals; since it now seems plain to me that that theory ought to be vacated in favor of a new and truer one, this new and truer one to be named the Descent of Man from the Higher Animals.

Work like you dont need the money. Dance like no one is watching. And love like youve never been hurt.

Distance lends enchantment to the view.

Like it! Yes—the way Id like a hot stove if I was to set on it long enough. No, Tom, I wont be rich, and I wont live in them cussed smothery houses. I like the woods, and the river, and hogsheads, and Ill stick to em, too.

I can last two months on a good compliment.

But the elastic heart of youth cannot be compressed into one constrained shape long at a time.