A "Two Fathoms" Clemens Reader

And now, Ladies and Gentlemen, My Weekly Reader proudly presents a man who needs no introduction. America's very own first and greatest Literary King, the Pope of incandescent comedy, the Friar of acerbic wit, the Bishop of social commentary, the Rabbi to those who presume to write for those who pretend to read, the George Washington of American literature, the estimable Samuel "Two Fathoms" Clemens himself, Mark Twain! Let's read him, people! Mark Twain! Let's read him again, people, Mark Twain!

Mark Twain (1835-1910)

Others on Twain

 

"All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn." - Ernest Hemingway.

“The first truly American writer, and all of us since are his heirs." - William Faulkner

"The mark of how good '"Huckleberry Finn" has to be is that one can compare it to a number of our best modern American novels and it stands up page for page, awkward here, sensational there - absolutely the equal of one of those rare incredible first novels that come along once or twice in a decade." - Norman Mailer

"I believe that Mark Twain had a clearer vision of life, that he came nearer to its elementals and was less deceived by its false appearances, than any other American who has ever presumed to manufacture generalizations, not excepting Emerson. I believe that he was the true father of our national literature, the first genuinely American artist of the royal blood." - H.L. Mencken

"Mark Twain created a new type of literature and not a lot of people can say that. Not a lot of people can say they're absolutely original and completely self-made." - Val Kilmer

“I bought a book of Mark Twain quotes. That's about my speed. I'll read a couple quotes and put it down.” -Kid Rock

My own favorite Twain: 

On James Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses


Twain On War

“There has never been a just [war], never an honorable one--on the part of the instigator of the war. I can see a million years ahead, and this rule will never change in so many as half a dozen instances. The loud little handful--as usual--will shout for the war. The pulpit will--warily and cautiously--object--at first; the great, big, dull bulk of the nation will rub its sleepy eyes and try to make out why there should be a war, and will say, earnestly and indignantly, 'It is unjust and dishonorable, and there is no necessity for it.' Then the handful will shout louder. A few fair men on the other side will argue and reason against the war with speech and pen, and at first will have a hearing and be applauded; but it will not last long; those others will outshout them, and presently the anti-war audiences will thin out and lose popularity. Before long you will see this curious thing: the speakers stoned from the platform, and free speech strangled by hordes of furious men who in their secret hearts are still at one with those stoned speakers--as earlier--but do not dare say so. And now the whole nation--pulpit and all--will take up the war-cry, and shout itself hoarse, and mob any honest man who ventures to open his mouth; and presently such mouths will cease to open. Next the statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting the blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception.” ―  The Mysterious Stranger and Other Stories

Talking with Spirits, from Life on the Mississippi

Then the male members of the party moved to the fore-castle, to smoke and gossip. There were several old steamboatmen along, and I learned from them a great deal of what had been happening to my former river friends during my long absence. I learned that a pilot whom I used to steer for is become a spiritualist, and for more than fifteen years has been receiving a letter every week from a deceased relative, through a New York spiritualistic medium named Manchester–postage graduated by distance: from the local post-office in Paradise to New York, five dollars; from New York to St. Louis, three cents. I remember Mr. Manchester very well. I called on him once, ten years ago, with a couple of friends, one of whom wished to inquire after a deceased uncle. This uncle had lost his life in a peculiarly violent and unusual way, half a dozen years before: a cyclone blew him some three miles and knocked a tree down with him which was four feet through at the butt and sixty-five feet high. He did not survive this triumph. At the séance just referred to, my friend questioned his late uncle, through Mr. Manchester, and the late uncle wrote down his replies, using Mr. Manchester’s hand and pencil for that purpose. The following is a fair example of the questions asked, and also of the sloppy twaddle in the way of answers, furnished by Manchester under the pretence that it came from the spectre. If this man is not the paltriest fraud that lives, I owe him an apology:

Question. Where are you?

Answer. In the spirit world.

Q. Are you happy?

A. Very happy. Perfectly happy.

Q. How do you amuse yourself?

A. Conversation with friends, and other spirits.

Q. What else?

A. Nothing else. Nothing else is necessary.

Q. What do you talk about?

A. About how happy we are; and about friends left behind in the earth, and how to influence them for their good.

Q. When your friends in the earth all get to the spirit land, what shall you have to talk about then?–nothing but about how happy you all are?

No reply. It is explained that spirits will not answer frivolous questions.

Q. How is it that spirits that are content to spend an eternity in frivolous employments, and accept it as happiness, are so fastidious about frivolous questions upon the subject?

No reply.

Q. Would you like to come back?

A. No.

Q. Would you say that under oath?

A. Yes.

Q. What do you eat there?

A. We do not eat.

Q. What do you drink?

A. We do not drink.

Q. What do you smoke?

A. We do not smoke.

Q. What do you read?

A. We do not read.

Q. Do all the good people go to your place?

A. Yes.

Q. You know my present way of life. Can you suggest any additions to it, in the way of crime, that will reasonably insure my going to some other place?

A. No reply.

Q. When did you die?

A. I did not die, I passed away.

Q. Very well, then, when did you pass away? How long have you been in the spirit land?

A. We have no measurements of time here.

Q. Though you may be indifferent and uncertain as to dates and times in your present condition and environment, this has nothing to do with your former condition. You had dates then. One of these is what I ask for. You departed on a certain day in a certain year. Is not this true?

A. Yes.

Q. Then name the day of the month.

(Much fumbling with pencil, on the part of the medium, accompanied by violent spasmodic jerkings of his head and body, for some little time. Finally, explanation to the effect that spirits often forget dates, such things being without importance to them.)

Q. Then this one has actually forgotten the date of its translation to the spirit land?

This was granted to be the case.

Q. This is very curious. Well, then, what year was it?

(More fumbling, jerking, idiotic spasms, on the part of the medium. Finally, explanation to the effect that the spirit has forgotten the year.)

Q. This is indeed stupendous. Let me put one more question, one last question, to you, before we part to meet no more;–for even if I fail to avoid your asylum, a meeting there will go for nothing as a meeting, since by that time you will easily have forgotten me and my name: did you die a natural death, or were you cut off by a catastrophe?

A. (After long hesitation and many throes and spasms.) Natural death.

This ended the interview. My friend told the medium that when his relative was in this poor world, he was endowed with an extraordinary intellect and an absolutely defectless memory, and it seemed a great pity that he had not been allowed to keep some shred of these for his amusement in the realms of everlasting contentment, and for the amazement and admiration of the rest of the population there.

This man had plenty of clients–has plenty yet. He receives letters from spirits located in every part of the spirit world, and delivers them all over this country through the United States mail. These letters are filled with advice–advice from “spirits” who don’t know as much as a tadpole–and this advice is religiously followed by the receivers. One of these clients was a man whom the spirits (if one may thus plurally describe the ingenious Manchester) were teaching how to contrive an improved railway car-wheel. It is coarse employment for a spirit, but it is higher and wholesomer activity than talking forever about “how happy we are.”

Tom Sawyer Whitewashing the Fence, Chapter Two

Saturday morning was come, and all the summer world was bright and fresh, and brimming with life. There was a song in every heart; and if the heart was young the music issued at the lips. There was cheer in every face and a spring in every step. The locust-trees were in bloom and the fragrance of the blossoms filled the air. Cardiff Hill, beyond the village and above it, was green with vegetation and it lay just far enough away to seem a Delectable Land, dreamy, reposeful, and inviting.

Tom appeared on the sidewalk with a bucket of whitewash and a long-handled brush. He surveyed the fence, and all gladness left him and a deep melancholy settled down upon his spirit. Thirty yards of board fence nine feet high. Life to him seemed hollow, and existence but a burden. Sighing, he dipped his brush and passed it along the topmost plank; repeated the operation; did it again; compared the insignificant whitewashed streak with the far-reaching continent of unwhitewashed fence, and sat down on a tree-box discouraged. Jim came skipping out at the gate with a tin pail, and singing Buffalo Gals. Bringing water from the town pump had always been hateful work in Tom’s eyes, before, but now it did not strike him so. He remembered that there was company at the pump. White, mulatto, and negro boys and girls were always there waiting their turns, resting, trading playthings, quarrelling, fighting, skylarking. And he remembered that although the pump was only a hundred and fifty yards off, Jim never got back with a bucket of water under an hour – and even then somebody generally had to go after him. Tom said:

“Say, Jim, I’ll fetch the water if you’ll whitewash some.”

Jim shook his head and said: “Can’t, Mars Tom. Ole missis, she tole me I got to go an’ git dis water an’ not stop foolin’ roun’ wid anybody. She say she spec’ Mars Tom gwine to ax me to whitewash, an’ so she tole me go ‘long an’ ‘tend to my own business – she ‘lowed she’d ‘tend to de whitewashin’.”

“Oh, never you mind what she said, Jim. That’s the way she always talks. Gimme the bucket – I won’t be gone only a a minute. She won’t ever know.”

“Oh, I dasn’t, Mars Tom. Ole missis she’d take an’ tar de head off’n me. ‘Deed she would.”

“She! She never licks anybody – whacks ’em over the head with her thimble – and who cares for that, I’d like to know. She talks awful, but talk don’t hurt – anyways it don’t if she don’t cry. Jim, I’ll give you a marvel. I’ll give you a white alley!”

Jim began to waver.

“White alley, Jim! And it’s a bully taw.”

“My! Dat’s a mighty gay marvel, I tell you! But Mars Tom I’s powerful ‘fraid ole missis – ”

“And besides, if you will I’ll show you my sore toe.”

Jim was only human – this attraction was too much for him. He put down his pail, took the white alley, and bent over the toe with absorbing interest while the bandage was being unwound. In another moment he was flying down the street with his pail and a tingling rear, Tom was whitewashing with vigor, and Aunt Polly was retiring from the field with a slipper in her hand and triumph in her eye. But Tom’s energy did not last. He began to think of the fun he had planned for this day, and his sorrows multiplied. Soon the free boys would come tripping along on all sorts of delicious expeditions, and they would make a world of fun of him for having to work – the very thought of it burnt him like fire. He got out his worldly wealth and examined it – bits of toys, marbles, and trash; enough to buy an exchange of work, maybe, but not half enough to buy so much as half an hour of pure freedom. So he returned his straitened means to his pocket, and gave up the idea of trying to buy the boys. At this dark and hopeless moment an inspiration burst upon him! Nothing less than a great, magnificent inspiration.

He took up his brush and went tranquilly to work. Ben Rogers hove in sight presently – the very boy, of all boys, whose ridicule he had been dreading. Ben’s gait was the hop-skip-and-jump – proof enough that his heart was light and his anticipations high. He was eating an apple, and giving a long, melodious whoop, at intervals, followed by a deep-toned ding-dong-dong, ding-dong-dong, for he was personating a steamboat. As he drew near, he slackened speed, took the middle of the street, leaned far over to star-board and rounded to ponderously and with laborious pomp and circumstance – for he was personating the Big Missouri, and considered himself to be drawing nine feet of water. He was boat and captain and engine-bells combined, so he had to imagine himself standing on his own hurricane-deck giving the orders and executing them:

“Stop her, sir! Ting-a-ling-ling!” The headway ran almost out, and he drew up slowly toward the sidewalk.

“Ship up to back! Ting-a-ling-ling!” His arms straightened and stiffened down his sides.

“Set her back on the stabboard! Ting-a-ling-ling! Chow! ch-chow-wow! Chow!” His right hand, meantime, describing stately circles – for it was representing a forty-foot wheel.

“Let her go back on the labboard! Ting-a-ling-ling! Chow-ch-chow-chow!” The left hand began to describe circles.

“Stop the stabboard! Ting-a-ling-ling! Stop the labboard! Come ahead on the stabboard! Stop her! Let your outside turn over slow! Ting-a-ling-ling! Chow-ow-ow! Get out that head-line! Lively now! Come – out with your spring-line – what’re you about there! Take a turn round that stump with the bight of it! Stand by that stage, now – let her go! Done with the engines, sir! Ting-a-ling-ling! Sh’t! s’h’t! sh’t!” (trying the gauge-cocks).

Tom went on whitewashing – paid no attention to the steamboat. Ben stared a moment and then said: “Hi- yi ! You’re up a stump, ain’t you!”

No answer. Tom surveyed his last touch with the eye of an artist, then he gave his brush another gentle sweep and surveyed the result, as before. Ben ranged up alongside of him. Tom’s mouth watered for the apple, but he stuck to his work. Ben said:

“Hello, old chap, you got to work, hey?”

Tom wheeled suddenly and said: “Why, it’s you, Ben! I warn’t noticing.”

“Say – I’m going in a-swimming, I am. Don’t you wish you could? But of course you’d druther work – wouldn’t you? Course you would!”

Tom contemplated the boy a bit, and said: “What do you call work?”

“Why, ain’t that work?”

Tom resumed his whitewashing, and answered carelessly: “Well, maybe it is, and maybe it ain’t. All I know, is, it suits Tom Sawyer.”

“Oh come, now, you don’t mean to let on that you like it?”

The brush continued to move.

“Like it? Well, I don’t see why I oughtn’t to like it. Does a boy get a chance to whitewash a fence every day?”

That put the thing in a new light. Ben stopped nibbling his apple. Tom swept his brush daintily back and forth – stepped back to note the effect – added a touch here and there – criticised the effect again – Ben watching every move and getting more and more interested, more and more absorbed. Presently he said:

“Say, Tom, let me whitewash a little.”

Tom considered, was about to consent; but he altered his mind: “No – no – I reckon it wouldn’t hardly do, Ben. You see, Aunt Polly’s awful particular about this fence – right here on the street, you know – but if it was the back fence I wouldn’t mind and she wouldn’t. Yes, she’s awful particular about this fence; it’s got to be done very careful; I reckon there ain’t one boy in a thousand, maybe two thousand, that can do it the way it’s got to be done.”

“No – is that so? Oh come, now – lemme, just try. Only just a little – I’d let you, if you was me, Tom.”

“Ben, I’d like to, honest injun; but Aunt Polly – well, Jim wanted to do it, but she wouldn’t let him; Sid wanted to do it, and she wouldn’t let Sid. Now don’t you see how I’m fixed? If you was to tackle this fence and anything was to happen to it – ”

“Oh, shucks, I’ll be just as careful. Now lemme try. Say – I’ll give you the core of my apple.”

“Well, here – No, Ben, now don’t. I’m afeard – ”

“I’ll give you all of it!”

Tom gave up the brush with reluctance in his face, but alacrity in his heart. And while the late steamer Big Missouri worked and sweated in the sun, the retired artist sat on a barrel in the shade close by, dangled his legs, munched his apple, and planned the slaughter of more innocents. There was no lack of material; boys happened along every little while; they came to jeer, but remained to whitewash. By the time Ben was fagged out, Tom had traded the next chance to Billy Fisher for a kite, in good repair; and when he played out, Johnny Miller bought in for a dead rat and a string to swing it with – and so on, and so on, hour after hour. And when the middle of the afternoon came, from being a poor poverty-stricken boy in the morning, Tom was literally rolling in wealth. He had besides the things before mentioned, twelve marbles,part of a jews-harp, a piece of blue bottle-glass to look through, a spool cannon, a key that wouldn’t unlock anything, a fragment of chalk, a glass stopper of a decanter, a tin soldier, a couple of tadpoles, six fire-crackers, a kitten with only one eye, a brass door-knob, a dog-collar – but no dog – the handle of a knife, four pieces of orange-peel, and a dilapidated old window sash.

He had had a nice, good, idle time all the while – plenty of company – and the fence had three coats of whitewash on it! If he hadn’t run out of whitewash he would have bankrupted every boy in the village.

Tom said to himself that it was not such a hollow world, after all. 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. 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 and then they would resign.

The boy mused awhile over the substantial change which had taken place in his worldly circumstances, and then wended toward headquarters to report.

Mark Twain Quick Quotes

“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.”

“A clear conscience is the sure sign of a bad memory.”

“A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.”

“A man's character may be learned from the adjectives which he habitually uses in conversation.”

“Adam was but human—this explains it all. He did not want the apple for the apple's sake, he wanted it only because it was forbidden. The mistake was in not forbidding the serpent; then he would have eaten the serpent.” ―  Pudd'nhead Wilson

“After all these years, I see that I was mistaken about Eve in the beginning; it is better to live outside the Garden with her than inside it without her.” ― The Diaries of Adam & Eve

“Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.”

“All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence; then success is sure. ”

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

“Always do what is right. It will gratify half of mankind and astound the other.”

“Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured.”

“Any emotion, if it is sincere, is involuntary.”

“April 1. This is the day upon which we are reminded of what we are on the other three hundred and sixty-four.”

“Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint.”

“Books are for people who wish they were somewhere else.”

“But who prays for Satan? Who, in eighteen centuries, has had the common humanity to pray for the one sinner that needed it most?”

“Classic' - a book which people praise and don't read.”

“Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.”

“Comparison is the death of joy.”

“Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear - not absence of fear.”

“December is the toughest month of the year. Others are July, January, September, April, November, May, March, June, October, August, and February.”

“Don’t go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.”

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

“Education consists mainly of what we have unlearned.” ― Notebook

“Education: the path from cocky ignorance to miserable uncertainty.”

“Every person is a book, each year a chapter,”

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

“Explaining humor is a lot like dissecting a frog, you learn a lot in the process, but in the end you kill it.”

“Forgive quickly, Kiss slowly. Love truly. Laugh uncontrollably. And never regret anything that makes you smile.”

“Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please.”

“Giving up smoking is the easiest thing in the world. I know because I've done it thousands of times.”

“Go to heaven for the climate and hell for the company.”

“God created war so that Americans would learn geography.”

“Good friends, good books, and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.”

“He had had much experience of physicians, and said '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'.” ― Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World

“Heaven goes by favor. If it went by merit, you would stay out and your dog would go in.”

“History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme.”

“Honesty: The best of all the lost arts.”

“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.”

"I can last two months on a good compliment.”

“I couldn't bear to think about it; and yet, somehow, I couldn't think about nothing else.” ―  The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“I did not attend his funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it.”

“I didn't have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.”

“I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.”

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

“I have found out that there ain't no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than to travel with them.” - Tom Sawyer Abroad

“I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.”

“I haven't any right to criticize books, and I don't do it except when I hate them. I often want to criticize Jane Austen, but her books madden me so that I can't conceal my frenzy from the reader; and therefore I have to stop every time I begin. Every time I read Pride and Prejudice I want to dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone.”

“I must have a prodigious amount of mind; it takes me as much as a week, sometimes, to make it up!”

“I wish I could make him understand that a loving good heart is riches enough, and that without it intellect is poverty.” ―  The Diary of Adam and Eve

“If animals could speak, the dog would be a blundering outspoken fellow; but the cat would have the rare grace of never saying a word too much.”

“If books are not good company, where shall I find it?”

“If you don't read the newspaper, you're uninformed. If you read the newspaper, you're mis-informed.”

 “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 man.”

“If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything.”

“In a good bookroom you feel in some mysterious way that you are absorbing the wisdom contained in all the books through your skin, without even opening them.”

“It is better to deserve honors and not have them than to have them and not deserve them.”

“It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare.”

“It's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog.”

“I've lived through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened.”

“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. When you are seeking to bring big plans to fruition it is important with whom you regularly associate. Hang out with friends who are like-minded and who are also designing purpose-filled lives. Similarly be that kind of a friend for your friends.”

“Kindness is a language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see.”

“Life is short, Break the Rules."

“Loyalty to country always. Loyalty to government, when it deserves it.”

“Man was made at the end of the week's work when God was tired.”

“Most writers regard the truth as their most valuable possession, and therefore are economical in its use.”

“Name the greatest of all inventors. Accident.”

“Never allow someone to be your priority while allowing yourself to be their option.”

“Never argue with stupid people, they will drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience.”

“Never put off till tomorrow what may be done day after tomorrow just as well".

“Never tell the truth to people who are not worthy of it.”

“New Orleans food is as delicious as the less criminal forms of sin.”

“Of all God's creatures, there is only one that cannot be made slave of the leash. That one is the cat. If man could be crossed with the cat it would improve the man, but it would deteriorate the cat.”

“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.”

“One of the most striking differences between a cat and a lie is that a cat has only nine lives.”

“Out of all the things I have lost, I miss my mind the most.”

“Part of the secret of success in life is to eat what you like and let the food fight it out inside.”

“Plain question and plain answer make the shortest road out of most perplexities.”

“Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.”

“Right is right, and wrong is wrong, and a body ain’t got no business doing wrong when he ain’t ignorant and knows better.” ― The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“Sanity and happiness are an impossible combination.”

“Substitute 'damn' every time you're inclined to write 'very;' your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.”

“The best way to cheer yourself is to try to cheer someone else up.”

“The Bible has noble poetry in it... and some good morals and a wealth of obscenity, and upwards of a thousand lies.”

“The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.”

“The dog is a gentleman; I hope to go to his heaven not man's.”

“The easy confidence with which I know another man's religion is folly teaches me to suspect that my own is also.”

“The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.”

“The human race has only one really effective weapon and that is laughter.”

“The less there is to justify a traditional custom, the harder it is to get rid of it” ―  The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“The man who does not read has no advantage over the man who cannot read.”

“The most interesting information come from children, for they tell all they know and then stop.”

 “The only difference between a tax man and a taxidermist is that the taxidermist leaves the skin.”

“The secret to getting ahead is getting started.”

“The so-called Christian nations are the most enlightened and progressive ... but in spite of their religion, not because of it. The Church has opposed every innovation and discovery from the day of Galileo down to our own time, when the use of anesthetic in childbirth was regarded as a sin because it avoided the biblical curse pronounced against Eve. And every step in astronomy and geology ever taken has been opposed by bigotry and superstition. The Greeks surpassed us in artistic culture and in architecture five hundred years before Christian religion was born.”

“The trouble is not in dying for a friend, but in finding a friend worth dying for.”

“The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.”

“The worst loneliness is to not be comfortable with yourself.”

“There are many humorous things in the world; among them, the white man's notion that he is less savage than the other savages.”― Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World

“There are several good protections against temptations, but the surest is cowardice.”

 “There are three things men can do with women: love them, suffer them, or turn them into literature.”

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

“To do good is noble. To tell others to do good is even nobler and much less trouble.”

“To get the full value of joy you must have someone to divide it with.”

“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.”

“Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't.”

“What a wee little part of a person's life are his acts and his words! His real life is led in his head, and is known to none but himself. All day long, the mill of his brain is grinding, and his thoughts, not those of other things, are his history. These are his life, and they are not written. Everyday would make a whole book of 80,000 words -- 365 books a year. Biographies are but the clothes and buttons of the man -- the biography of the man himself cannot be written.”

“What would men be without women? Scarce, sir...mighty scarce.”

“When angry, count four. When very angry, swear.”

“When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.”

“When in doubt tell the truth. It will confound your enemies and astound your friends.”

“When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained.”

“Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.”

“Wrinkles should merely indicate where the smiles have been.”

“You believe in a book that has talking animals, wizards, witches, demons, sticks turning into snakes, burning bushes, food falling from the sky, people walking on water, and all sorts of magical, absurd and primitive stories, and you say that we are the ones that need help?”

“You can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.”