Oh how I do appreciate Mr. Twain...

Good ol' Sammy Clemens...He had such a wonderful ability to express the true feelings of his heart without worrying about how other people will feel and react. Here are some of my favorite "Twainisms" :)


"The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them."

"Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life."

"Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint."

"Heaven goes by favor. If it went by merit, you would stay out and your dog would go in."

"Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on or by imbeciles who really mean it."

"Now and then we had a hope that if we lived and were good, God would permit us to be pirates."

"After all these years, I see that I was mistaken about Eve in the beginning; it is better to live outside the Garden with her than inside it without her."

"Last week I stated that this woman was the ugliest woman I had ever seen. I have since been visited by her sister and now wish to withdraw that statement."

"I like a thin book because it can steady a table, a leather volume because it will strop a razor, and a heavy book because it can be thrown at a cat."

"Don't look at the world with your hands in your pockets. To write about it you have to reach out and touch it."

"I haven't any right to criticize books, and I don't do it except when I hate them. I often want to criticize Jane Austen, but her books madden me so that I can't conceal my frenzy from the reader; and therefore I have to stop every time I begin. Every time I read 'Pride and Prejudice' I want to dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone." (I like this one, in particular, because I do not enjoy Jane Austen novels...)

"I did not attend his funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it."

"Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot. BY ORDER OF THE AUTHOR per G.G., CHIEF OF ORDNANCE" (preface to The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn- my favorite book ever!)

"I was born lazy. I am no lazier now than I was forty years ago, but that is because I reached the limit forty years ago. You can't go beyond possibility."

"In a good bookroom you feel in some mysterious way that you are absorbing the wisdom contained in all the books through your skin, without even opening them."