Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Steal a chicken if you get a chance, Huck, because if you don't want it, someone else does and a good deed ain't never forgotten.
When one's character begins to fall under suspicion and disfavor, how swift, then, is the work of disintegration and destruction.
Do something everyday that you don't want to do; this is the golden rule for acquiring the habit of doing your duty without pain.
It was a place of sin, loose women, whiskey and gambling. It was no place for a good Presbyterian, and I did not long remain one.
If I'd seen a playwright ever write an' play at the same time, I'd have given 'em more of a chance at cards. Can I get an 'amen?'
There are laws to protect the freedom of the press's speech, but none that are worth anything to protect the people from the press
Dying man couldn't make up his mind which place to go to-both have their advantages, heaven for the climate, hell for the company!
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
The ordinary chestnut can beget a sickly and reluctant laugh, but it takes a horse chestnut to fetch the gorgeous big horse-laugh.
I said there was but one solitary thing about the past worth remembering, and that was the fact that it is past-can't be restored.
The moral sense enables one to perceive morality, and avoid it. The immoral sense enables one to perceive immorality and enjoy it.
When I reflect upon the number of disagreeable people who I know have gone to a better world, I am moved to lead a different life.
When a humorist ventures upon the grave concerns of life he must do his job better than another man or he works harm to his cause.
He [George Washington Cable] has taught me to abhor and detest the Sabbath day and hunt up new and troublesome ways to dishonor it.
In religion and politics, people's belief's and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second hand, and without examination
If the bubble reputation can be obtained only at the cannon's mouth, I am willing to go there for it, provided the cannon is empty.
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.
A conspiracy is nothing but a secret agreement of a number of men for the pursuance of policies which they dare not admit in public
I can teach anybody how to get what they want out of life. The problem is that I can't find anybody who can tell me what they want.
There comes a time in every rightly constructed boy's life when he has a raging desire to go somewhere and dig for hidden treasure.
The law of work seems unfair, but nothing can change it; the more enjoyment you get out of your work, the more money you will make.
It has taken a weary long time to persuade American Presbyterians to give up infant damnation and try to bear it the best they can.
Blasphemy? No, it is not blashphemy. If God is as vast as that, he is above blasphemy; if he is as little as that, He is beneath it.
We like to read about rich people in the newspapers; the papers know it, and they do their best to keep this appetite liberally fed.
When the end of the world comes, I want to be in Kentucky, because everything there happens 20 years after it happens anywhere else.
I believe I have no prejudices whatsoever. All I need to know is that a man is a member of the human race. That's bad enough for me.
Once I talked to the inmates of an insane asylum in Hartford. I have talked to idiots a thousand times, but only once to the insane.
The minute we get reconciled to a person, how willing we are to throw aside little needless punctilios and pronounce his name right.
I played Chess with him and would have beaten him sometimes only he always took back his last move, and ran the game out differently
Creed and opinion change with time, and their symbols perish; but Literature and its temples are sacred to all creeds and inviolate.
Presbyterianism without infant damnation would be like the dog on the train that couldn't be identified because it had lost its tag.
Being rich ain't what it's cracked up to be. It's just worry and worry, and sweat and sweat, and a-wishing you was dead all the time.
One day man by the slow processes of evolution shall develop into something really fine and high - some billions of years hence, say.
Laws are sand, customs are rock. Laws can be evaded and punishment escaped, but an openly transgressed custom brings sure punishment.
It is strange the way the ignorant and inexperienced so often and so undeservedly succeed when the informed and the experienced fail.
There is more real pleasure to be gotten out of a malicious act, where your heart is in it, than out of thirty acts of a nobler sort.
I am admonished in many ways that time is pushing me inexorably along. I am approaching the threshold of age; in 1977 I shall be 142.
And so when I couldn't stand it no longer, I lit out. I got into my old rags and my sugar-hogshead again, and was free and satisfied.
Fortune knocks at every man's door once in a life, but in a good many cases the man is in a neighboring saloon and does not hear her.
In the real world, nothing happens at the right place at the right time. It is the job of journalists and historians to correct that.
The longing of my heart is a fairy portrait of myself: I want to be pretty; I want to eliminate facts and fill up the gap with charms.
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.
There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.
I am always reading immoral books on the sly, and then selfishly trying to prevent other people from having the same wicked good time.
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.
I cannot call to mind a single instance where I have ever been irreverent, except toward the things which were sacred to other people.
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.
Of the demonstrably wise there are but two: those who commit suicide, & those who keep their reasoning faculties atrophied with drink.
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.
I believe I have had the most trouble with a portrait which I painted in installments - the head on one canvas and the bust on another.