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490. There are many scapegoats for our blunders, but the most popular one is Providence. 491. An average English word is four letters and a half. By hard, honest labor I've dug all the large words out of my vocabulary and shaved it down till the average is three and a half... I never write ''metropolis'' for seven cents, because I can get the same money for ''city'.' I never write ''policeman',' because I can get the same price for ''cop'.'... I never write ''valetudinarian'' at all, for not even hunger and wretchedness can humble me to the point where I will do a word like that for seven cents; I wouldn't do it for fifteen. 492. It is better to be a young June-bug than an old bird of paradise. 493. It is more trouble to make a maxim than it is to do right. 494. Nothing incites to money-crimes like great poverty or great wealth. 495. Nothing so needs reforming as other people's habits. 496. Never tell a lie except for practice. 497. Many a small thing has been made large by the right kind of advertising. 498. The first half of life consists of the capacity to enjoy without the chance; the last half of life consists of the chance without the capacity. 499. I was born modest; not all over, but in spots. 500. Everything human is pathetic. The secret source of humor itself is not joy but sorrow. There is no humor in heaven. 501. Let us make a special effort to stop communicating with each other, so we can have some conversation. 502. Conformity-the natural instinct to passively yield to that vague something recognized as authority. 503. I must have a prodigious quantity of mind; it takes me as much as a week sometimes to make it up. 504. Poetry, like chastity, can be carried to far. 505. Eloquence is the essential thing in a speech, not information. 506. What a lie it is to call this a free country, where none but the unworthy and undeserving may swear. 507. My advice to girls: first, don't smoke to excess; second, don't drink to excess; third, don't marry to excess. 508. At fifty a man can be an ass without being an optimist but not an optimist without being an ass. 509. Many when they come to die have spent all the truth that was in them, and enter the next world as paupers. I have saved up enough to make an astonishment there. 510. Man is the Reasoning Animal. Such is the claim. I think it is open to dispute. 510. They spell it Vinci and pronounce it Vinchy; foreigners always spell better than they pronounce. 511. It is the will of God that we must have critics and missionaries and congressmen and humorists, and we must bear the burden. 512. No God and no religion can survive ridicule. No political church, no nobility, no royalty or other fraud, can face ridicule in a fair field, and live. 513. The lie, as a virtue, a principle, is eternal; the lie, as a recreation, a solace, a refuge in time of need, the fourth Grace, the tenth Muse, man's best and surest friend is immortal. 514. When your friends begin to flatter you on how young you look, it's a sure sign you're getting old. 515. The idea that no gentleman ever swears is all wrong. He can swear and still be a gentleman if he does it in a nice and benevolent and affectionate way. 516. There's always a hole in theories somewhere if you look close enough. 517. The gentle reader will never, never know what a consummate ass he can become until he goes abroad 518. The work that is really a man's own work is play and not work at all. 519. An occasional compliment is necessary to keep up one's self-respect. 520. Where every man in a state has a vote, brutal laws are impossible. 521. Men think they think upon the great political questions, and they do; but they think with their party, not independently; they read its literature, but not that of the other side. 522. An ethical man is a Christian holding four aces. 523. The house was as empty as a beer closet in a premises where painters have been at work. 524. Let us be grateful to Adam, our benefactor. He cut us out of the 'blessing'' of idleness and won for us the ''curse'' of labor. 525. A railroad is like a lie you have to keep building it to make it stand. 526. The best and most telling speech is not the actual impromptu one but the counterfeit of it. 527. A man is accepted into a church for what he believes and he is turned out for what he knows. 528. Whatever a man's age, he can reduce it several years by putting a bright-colored flower in his button-hole. 529. It isn't so astonishing the number of things that I can remember, as the number of things that I can remember that aren't so. 530. There are some books that refuse to be written. They stand their ground year after year and will not be persuaded. It isn't because the book is not there and worth being written -- it is only because the right form of the story does not present itself. There is only one right form for a story and if you fail to find that form the story will not tell itself. 531. Nations do not think, they only feel. They get their feelings at second hand through their temperaments, not their brains. A nation can be brought / by force of circumstances, not argument / to reconcile itself to any kind of government or religion that can be devised; in time it will fit itself to the required conditions; later it will prefer them and will fiercely fight for them. 532. Laughter is the greatest weapon we have and we, as humans, use it the least. 533. Every time you stop a school, you will have to build a jail. What you gain at one end you lose at the other. It's like feeding a dog on his own tail. It won't fatten the dog. 534. Fame is a vapor, popularity an accident; the only earthly certainty is oblivion. 535. There is no distinctly American criminal class - except Congress. 536. As to the Adjective; when in doubt, strike it out. 537. We do no benevolences whose first benefit is not for ourselves. 538. No public interest is anything other or nobler than a massed accumulation of private interests. 539. Geological time is not money. 540. A crime persevered in a thousand centuries ceases to be a crime, and becomes a virtue. This is the law of custom, and custom supersedes all other forms of law. 541. India has 2,000,000 gods, and worships them all. In religion, other countries are paupers; India is the only millionaire. 542. I have been cautioned to talk but be careful not to say anything. I do not consider this a difficult task. 543. A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn by no other way. 544. I learned long ago never to say the obvious thing, but leave the obvious thing to commonplace and inexperienced people to say. 545. Honest poverty is a gem that even a king might be proud to call his own - but I wish to sell out. 546. Civilization is a limitless multiplication of unnecessary necessities. 547. Some people get an education without going to college; the rest get it after they get out. 548. Only he who has seen better days and lives to see better days again knows their full value. 549. Human pride is not worthwhile; there is always something lying in wait to take the wind out of it. 550. Statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting 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. 551. Lord save us all from... a hope tree that has lost the faculty of putting out blossoms. 552. Each person is born to one possession which out values all his others - his last breath. 553. Each man must for himself alone decide what is right and what is wrong, which course is patriotic and which isn't. You cannot shirk this and be a man. To decide against your conviction is to be an unqualified and excusable traitor, both to yourself and to your country, let them label you as they may. 554. Duties are not performed for duty's sake, but because their neglect would make the man uncomfortable. A man performs but one duty - the duty of contenting his spirit, the duty of making himself agreeable to himself. 555. In the first place, God made idiots. That was for practice. Then he made school boards. 556. When one reads Bibles, one is less surprised at what the Deity knows than at what He doesn't know. 557. A banker is a fellow who lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining and wants it back the minute it begins to rain. 558. Frankness is a jewel; only the young can afford it. 559. For all the talk you hear about knowledge being such a wonderful thing, instinct is worth forty of it for real unerringness. 560. Time and tide wait for no man. A pompous and self-satisfied proverb, and was true for a billion years; but in our day of electric wires and water-ballast we turn it around: Man waits not for time nor tide. 561. I never let schooling interfere with my education. 562. Everybody's private motto: It's better to be popular than right. 563. Women cannot receive even the most palpably judicious suggestion without arguing it, that is, married women. 564. A good memory and a tongue tied in the middle is a combination which gives immortality to conversation. 565. His ignorance covers the world like a blanket, and there's scarcely a hole in it anywhere. 566. To make a pledge of any kind is to declare war against nature; for a pledge is a chain that is always clanking and reminding the wearer of it that he is not a free man. 567. We do not deal much in facts when we are contemplating ourselves. 568. By trying, we can easily learn to endure adversity another man's, I mean. 569. There is no salvation for us but to adopt Civilization and lift ourselves down to its level. 570. It is not best that we use our morals week days; it gets them out of repair for Sundays. 571. It is not likely that any complete life has ever been lived which was not a failure in the secret judgment of the person that lived it. 572. Wit is the sudden marriage of ideas which before their union were not perceived to have any relation. 573. The Autocrat of Russia possesses more power than any other man in the earth; but he cannot stop a sneeze. 574. Shut the door not that it lets in the cold but that it lets out the coziness. 575. Circumstances make man, not man circumstances. 576. The rule is perfect: in all matters of opinion our adversaries are insane. 577. 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. 578. Do the thing you fear most and the death of fear is certain. 579. Every time I reform in one direction I go overboard in another. 580. I never write Metropolis for seven cents because I can get the same price for city. I never write policeman because I can get the same money for cop. 581. Public opinion is held in reverence. It settles everything. Some think it is the voice of God. 582. Principles aren't of much account anyway, except at election time. After that you hang them up to let them season. 583. The human race was always interesting and we know by its past that it will always continue so, monotonously. 584. Morals consist of political morals, commercial morals, ecclesiastical morals, and morals. 585. We are discreet sheep; we wait to see how the drove is going, and then go with the drove. 586. A man's first duty is to his own conscience and honor; the party and country come second to that, and never first. 587. Many public-school children seem to know only two dates - 1492 and 4th of July; and as a rule they don't know what happened on either occasion. 588. Prosperity is the surest breeder of insolence I know. 589. He is now rising from affluence to poverty. 590. A man never reaches that dizzy height of wisdom that he can no longer be led by the nose. 591. He would go to Halifax for half a chance to show off and he would go to hell for a whole one. 592. There are no people who are quite so vulgar as the over-refined. 593. Drag your thoughts away from your troubles... by the ears, by the heels, or any other way you can manage it. 594. Often, the surest way to convey misinformation is to tell the strict truth. 595. It is your human environment that makes climate. 596. The world will not stop and think- it never does, it is not its way; its way is to generalize from a single sample. 597. Some of us cannot be optimists, but all of us can be bigamists. 598. It's a good idea to obey all the rules when you're young just so you'll have the strength to break them when you're old. 599. An author values a compliment even when it comes from a source of doubtful competency. 600. If you beseech a blessing upon yourself, beware! lest without intent you invoke a curse upon a neighbor at the same time. 601. I shall not often meddle with politics, because we have a political Editor who is already excellent and only needs to serve a term or two in the penitentiary to be perfect. 602. The critic's symbol should be the tumble-bug: he deposits his egg in somebody else's dung, otherwise he could not hatch it. 603. Obscurity and competence - that is the life that is best worth living. 604. Every citizen of the republic ought to consider himself an unofficial policeman, and keep unsalaried watch and ward over the laws and their execution. 605. There are two times in a man's life when he should not speculate: when he can't afford it, and when he can. 606. He had discovered a great law of human action, without knowing it- namely, in order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to attain. 607. The poetry is all in the anticipation, for there is none in reality. 608. I don't know of a single foreign product that enters this country untaxed, except the answer to prayer. 609. The altar cloth of one aeon is the doormat of the next. 610. When a man's dog turns against him it is time for a wife to pack her trunk and go home to mama. 611. The system of refusing the mere act of drinking and leaving the desire in full force, is unintelligent war tactics, it seems to me. 612. The time to begin writing an article is when you have finished it to your satisfaction. By that time you begin to clearly and logically perceive what it is you really want to say. 613. Not until you become a stranger to yourself will you be able to make acquaintance with the Friend. 614. There are times when one would like to hang the whole human race, and finish the farce. 615. To lodge all power in one party and keep it there is to insure bad government and the sure and gradual deterioration of the public morals. 616. An honest man in politics shines more there than he would elsewhere. 617. Where prejudice exists it always discolors our thoughts. 618. Between believing a thing and thinking you know is only a small step and quickly taken. 619. When I am king, they shall not have bread and shelter only, but also teachings out of books, for a full belly is little worth where the mind is starved. 620. In statesmanship get the formalities right, never mind about the moralities. 621. You can't pray a lie. 622. I am a democrat only on principle, not by instinct - nobody is that. Doubtless some people say they are, but this world is grievously given to lying. 623. Write without pay until somebody offers to pay you. If nobody offers within three years, sawing wood is what you were intended for 624. Whoever has lived long enough to find out what life is, knows how deep a debt of gratitude we owe to Adam, the first great benefactor of our race. He brought death into the world. 625. I am different from Washington. I have a higher, grander standard of principle. Washington could not lie. I can lie, but I won't. 626. There is no such thing as ''the Queen's English'.' The property has gone into the hands of a joint stock company and we own the bulk of the shares! 627. Forget and forgive. This is not difficult when properly understood. It means forget inconvenient duties, then forgive yourself for forgetting. By rigid practice and stern determination, it comes easy. 628. I said there was nothing so convincing to an Indian as a general massacre. If he could not approve of the massacre, I said the next surest thing for an Indian was soap and education. Soap and education are not as sudden as a massacre, but they are more deadly in the long run; because a half-massacred Indian may recover, but if you educate him and wash him, it is bound to finish him some time or other. 629. Arguments have no chance against petrified training; they wear it as little as the waves wear a cliff. 630. [On his deathbed:] Death, the only immortal who treats us all alike, whose pity and whose peace and whose refuse are for all -- the soiled and the pure, the rich and the poor, the loved and the unloved. 631. Laws are sand, customs are rock. Laws can be evaded and punishment escaped, but an openly transgressed custom brings sure punishment. 632. The institution of Royalty in any form is an insult to the human race. 633. Be Yourself is about the worst advice you can give to people. 634. The lack of money is the root of all evils. 635. A lie can run around the world six times while the truth is still trying to put on its pants. 639. Put all your eggs in the one basket and -- Watch That Basket. 640. Surgeons and anatomists see no beautiful women in all their lives, but only a ghastly stack of bones with Latin names to them, and a network of nerves and muscles and tissues inflamed by disease. 641. If you have nothing to say, say nothing. 642. Name the greatest of all inventors. Accident. 643. Let us endeavor so to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry. 644. None of them had any idea where the Holy Grail really was, and I don't think any of them actually expected to find it, or would have known what to do with it if he had run across it. 645. . . . a man must not hold himself aloof from the things which his friends and his community have at heart if he would be liked . . . 646. Old habit of mind is one of the toughest things to get away from in the world. It transmits itself like physical form and feature . . . 647. The average man don't like trouble and danger. 648. You may have noticed that the less I know about a subject the more confidence I have, and the more new light I throw on it. 649. Tomorrow night I appear for the first time before a Boston audience 4000 critics. 650. My kind of loyalty was loyalty to one's country, not to... its office holders. 651. The Jews are members of the human race - worse I can say of no man. 652. I said there was but one solitary thing about the past worth remembering and that was the fact that it is past - and can't be restored. 653. A soiled baby, with a neglected nose, cannot be conscientiously regarded as a thing of beauty. 654. An occultation of Venus is not half so difficult as an eclipse of the Sun, but because it comes seldom the world thinks it's a grand thing. 655. The self taught man seldom knows anything accurately, and he does not know a tenth as much as he could have known if he had worked under teachers, and besides, he brags, and is the means of fooling other thoughtless people into going and doing as he. 656. The best way to cheer yourself up is to try to cheer somebody else up. 657. I am the entire human race compacted together. I have found that there is no ingredient of the race which I do not possess. 658. The wit knows that his place is at the tail of a procession. 659.Dead, the noblest man's meat is inferior to pork. 660. Fleas can be taught nearly anything that a congressman can. 661. It used to be a good hotel, but that proves nothing - I used to be a good boy. 662. I cannot keep from talking, even at the risk of being instructive. 663. Some men worship rank, some worship heroes, some worship power, some worship God, and over these ideals they dispute, but they all worship money. 664. Facts are always delightful - Get your facts first, and - then you can distort 'em as much as you please. 665. When a man is known to have no settled convictions of his own he can't convict other people. 666. Let me make the superstitions of a nation and I care not who makes its laws or its songs either. 667. The English are mentioned in the Bible: Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. 668. The statue that advertises its modesty with a fig leaf really brings its modesty under suspicion. 669. Man's mind clumsily and tediously and laboriously patches little trivialities together and gets a result - such as it is. 670. We like a man to come right out and say what he thinks - if we agree with him. 671. To believe yourself brave is to be brave; it is the one only essential thing. 672. To my mind Judas Iscariot was nothing but a low, mean, premature Congressman. 673. I would rather have my ignorance than another man's knowledge, because I have so much of it. 674. All the talk used to be about doing people good, now it is about doing people. 675. Eternal rest sounds comforting in the pulpit; well, you try it once, and see how heavy time will hang on your hands. 676. 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. 677. There isn't a Parallel of Latitude but thinks it would have been the Equator if it had its rights. 678. Necessity knows no law. 679. Ideally a book would have no order to it, and the reader would have to discover his own. 680. There is an old-time toast which is golden for its beauty. "When you ascend the hill of prosperity may you not meet a friend. 681. Man - a creature made at the end of the week's work when God was tired. 682. Often it does seem a pity that Noah and his party did not miss the boat. 683. Honesty is the best policy - when there is money in it 684. The conviction of the rich that the poor are happier is no more foolish than the conviction of the poor that the rich are. 685.
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“Wherefore being all of one mind, we do highly resolve that government of the grafted by the grafter for the grafter shall not perish from the earth”
Mark Twain quote
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“Except a creature be part coward, it is not a compliment to say he is brave; it is merely a loose misapplication of the word”
Mark Twain quote
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“Probably nor'east to sou'west winds varying to the southard and westard and eastard and points between; high and low barometer, sweeping round from place to place; probably areas of rain, snow, heat and drought, succeeded or preceded by earth quakes”
Mark Twain quote
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“Custom is petrification; nothing but dynamite can dislodge it for a century”
Mark Twain quote



TIMES NEW ROMAN 10 NORMAL