He arrived on a comet's tail, and left the same way, having dwelt among us for a lifetime shining a light in our faces. Samuel Langhorne Clemens, humorist, satirist, lecturer... and one of America's greatest writers, better known as the incomparable Mark Twain. What follows are a number of pithy Twain quotes and notes for our mutual pleasure.
"Let us be thankful for the fools. But for them the rest of us could not succeed."
"It's better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than to open it and remove all doubt.""I believe that our Heavenly Father invented man because he was disappointed in the monkey."
"Adam and Eve had many advantages, but the principal one was that they escaped teething."
"Nothing so needs reforming as other people's habits."
"In the first place God made idiots. This was for practice. Then He made school boards.""Why is it that we rejoice at a birth and grieve at a funeral? It is because we are not the person involved."
"What are the proper proportions of a maxim? A minimum of sound to a maximum of sense."
"To be witty in France is very simple -- one merely needs to be dirty."
"Truth is stranger than Fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't."
