Mark Twain Quotes

Why is it that we rejoice at a birth and grieve at a funeral? It is because we are not the person involved.

What is it that confers the noblest delight? What is that which swells a man’s breast with pride above that which any other experience can bring to him? Discovery! To know that you are walking where none others have walked; that you are beholding what human eye has not seen before; that you are breathing a virgin atmosphere.

We all like to see people seasick when we are not, ourselves.

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 can not be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.

The rule is perfect: in all matters of opinion our adversaries are insane.

The less there is to justify a traditional custom, the harder it is to get rid of it.

Pity is for the living, envy is for the dead.

One is apt to overestimate beauty when it is rare.

No sane man can be happy, for to him life is real, and he sees what a fearful thing it is. Only the mad can be happy, and not many of those.

It is human nature to take delight in exciting admiration. It is what prompts children to say “smart” things, and do absurd ones, and in other ways “show off” when company is present. It is what makes gossips turn out in rain and storm to go and be the first to tell a startling bit of news.

I don’t want no better book than what your face is.

Ah, if he could only die temporarily!