Quotes from Mark Twain

He who asks is a fool for five minutes, but he who does not ask remains a fool forever.

I have a higher and grander standard of principle than George Washington. He could not lie; I can, but I won't.

Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do. Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.

If everyone was satisfied with himself, there would be no heroes.

A gentleman is someone who knows how to play the banjo and doesn't.

We consider that any man who can fiddle all through one of those Virginia Reels without losing his grip may be depended upon in any kind of musical emergency.

An ecstasy is a thing that will not go into words; it feels like music.

The southerner talks music.

Music is a good thing; and after all that soul-butter and hogwash, I never see it freshen up things so, and sound so honest and bully.

There was never yet an uninteresting life. Such a thing is an impossibility. Inside of the dullest exterior there is a drama, a comedy, and a tragedy.

Everyone is a moon, and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody.

One can enjoy a rainbow without necessarily forgetting the forces that made it.

It is just like man's vanity and impertinence to call an animal dumb because it is dumb to his dull perceptions.

I am only human, although I regret it.

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.

Such is luck! And such the treatment which honest, good perservance gets so often at the hands of unfair and malicious Nature!

If man had created man, he would be ashamed of his performance.

Architects cannot teach nature anything.

Nature makes the locust with an appetite for crops; man would have made him with an appetite for sand

We take a natural interest in novelties, but it is against nature to take an interest in familiar things.

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.

My parents were neither very poor nor conspicuously honest.

Always obey your parents - when they are present.

The modern patriotism, the true patriotism, the only rational patriotism is loyalty to the Nation all the time, loyalty to the Government when it deserves it.