1835-1910, American Humorist, Writer
A banker is a fellow who lends his umbrella when the sun is shining and wants it back the minute it begins to rain.
Mark Twain – [Bankers and Banking]
A big leather-bound volume makes an ideal razor strap. A thin book is useful to stick under a table with a broken caster to steady it. A large, flat atlas can be used to cover a window with a broken pane. And a thick, old-fashioned heavy book with a clasp is the finest thing in the world to throw at a noisy cat.
Mark Twain – [Books and Reading]
A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.
Mark Twain – [Books and Reading]
A crank is someone with a new idea — until it catches on.
Mark Twain – [Ideas]
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.
Mark Twain – [Crime and Criminals]
A good memory and a tongue tied in the middle is a combination which gives immortality to conversation.
Mark Twain – [Conversation]
A habit cannot be tossed out the window; it must be coaxed down the stairs a step at a time.
Mark Twain – [Habit]
A joke, even if it be a lame one, is nowhere so keenly relished or quickly applauded as in a murder trial.
Mark Twain – [Trials]
A lie can run around the world six times while the truth is still trying to put on its pants.
Mark Twain – [Lies and Lying]
A man can seldom — very, very, seldom — fight a winning fight against his training; the odds are too heavy.
Mark Twain – [Training]
A man cannot be made comfortable without his own approval.
Mark Twain – [Aid and Assistance]
A man never reaches that dizzy height of wisdom that he can no longer be lead by the nose.
Mark Twain – [Wisdom]
A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way.
Mark Twain – [Knowledge]
A man's house burns down. The smoking wreckage represents only a ruined home that was dear through years of use and pleasant associations. By and by, as the days and weeks go on, first he misses this, then that, then the other thing. And when he casts about for it he finds that it was in that house. Always it is an essential — there was but one of its kind. It cannot be replaced. It was in that house. It is irrevocably lost. It will be years before the tale of lost essentials is complete, and not till then can he truly know the magnitude of his disaster.
Mark Twain – [Bereavement]
A monarch, when good, is entitled to the consideration which we accord to a pirate who keeps Sunday School between crimes; when bad, he is entitled to none at all.
Mark Twain – [Royalty]
A powerful agent is the right word. Whenever we come upon one of those intensely right words… the resulting effect is physical as well as spiritual, and electrically prompt.
Mark Twain – [Words]
A soiled baby, with a neglected nose, cannot be conscientiously regarded as a thing of beauty.
Mark Twain – [Babies]
A wise man does not waste so good a commodity as lying for naught.
Mark Twain – [Lies and Lying]
Accident is the name of the greatest of all inventors.
Mark Twain – [Invention and Inventor]
Adam was the luckiest man; he had no mother-in-law.
Mark Twain – [Family]