Mark Twain’s Mustache—the World’s Greatest Facial Hair. Or Certainly Top Three, and No Lower Than Number Four.

The source of all humor is not laughter, but sorrow.

The signs of excessive indulgence in this destructive pastime are easily detectable. They are these: A disposition to eat, to drink, to smoke, to meet together convivially, to laugh, to joke, and tell indelicate stories—...

The highest perfection of politeness is only a beautiful edifice, built, from the base to the dome, of graceful and gilded forms of charitable and unselfish lying.

Ours is a terrible religion. The fleets of the world could swim in spacious comfort in the innocent blood it has spilt.

Never have a battle of wits with an unarmed person.

Conservatism is the blind and fear-filled worship of dead radicals.

…why is my cat a Muse? the cat has the rare grace of never saying a word too much― Mark Twain …that’s why …

Yes. And I’m rich now when I think about it. I own myself, and I’m worth eight hundred dollars. I wish I had the money. Then I wouldn’t ever want anything else

Frederick Douglass told in his Narrative how his condition as a slave became worse when his master underwent a religious conversion that allowed him to justify slavery as the punishment of the children of Ham....

The government of my country snubs honest simplicity but fondles artistic villainy, and I think I might have developed into a very capable pickpocket if I had remained in the public service a year or...

If you hold a cat by the tail, you learn things you can’t learn any other way.–Mark Twain

Loose and forbear!

Heaven is by favor; if it were by merit your dog would go in and you would stay out. Of all the creatures ever made (man) is the most detestable. Of the entire brood, he...

Consider the great Samuel Clemens. Huckleberry Finn is one of the few books that all American children are mandated to read: Jonathan Arac, in his brilliant new study of the teaching of Huck, is quite...

Honesty: The best of all the lost arts.

Why should I have to hide the fact that I don’t believe there’s a supreme being? There’s no proof of it. There’s no harm in saying you’re an atheist. It doesn’t mean you treat people...

Wherever he found his speech growing too modern — which was about every sentence or two — he ladled in a few such Scriptural phrases as “exceeding sore,” “and it came to pass,” etc., and...

Samuel Clemens.

Looking’ his last’ upon the scene of his former joys and his later sufferings, and wishing ‘she’ could see him now, abroad on the wild sea, facing peril and death with a dauntless heart, going...