Mark Twain · 712 pages
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“Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't.”
― Mark Twain, quote from Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World
“There are many humorous things in the world; among them, the white man's notion that he is less savage than the other savages.”
― Mark Twain, quote from Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World
“In the first place God made idiots. This was for practice. Then he made school boards.”
― Mark Twain, quote from Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World
“Be good and you will be lonesome.”
― Mark Twain, quote from Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World
“He had had much experience of physicians, and said 'the only way to keep your health is to eat what you don't want, drink what you don't like, and do what you'd druther not'.”
― Mark Twain, quote from Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World
“The joy of killing! the joy of seeing killing done - these are traits of the human race at large.”
― Mark Twain, quote from Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World
“Names are not always what they seem.”
― Mark Twain, quote from Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World
“Truth is the most valuable thing we have. Let us economize it.”
― Mark Twain, quote from Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World
“The Whites always mean well when they take human fish out of the ocean and try to make them dry and warm and happy and comfortable in a chicken coop; but the kindest-hearted white man can always be depended on to prove himself inadequate when he deals with savages. He cannot turn the situation around and imagine how he would like it to have a well-meaning savage transfer him from his house and his church and his clothes and his books and his choice food to a hideous wilderness of sand and rocks and snow, and ice and sleet and storm and blistering sun, with no shelter, no bed, no covering for his and his family's naked bodies, and nothing to eat but snakes and grubs and offal. This would be a hell to him; and if he had any wisdom he would know that his own civilization is a hell to the savage - but he hasn't any, and has never had any; and for lack of it he shut up those poor natives in the unimaginable perdition of his civilization, committing his crime with the very best intentions, and saw those poor creatures waste away under his tortures; and gazed at it, vaguely troubled and sorrowful, and wondered what could be the matter with them.”
― Mark Twain, quote from Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World
“I find that, as a rule, when a thing is a wonder to us it is not because of what we see in it, but because of what others have seen in it. We get almost all our wonders at second hand.”
― Mark Twain, quote from Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World
“It is ingeniously named, for it looks just as a cross would look if it looked like something else.”
― Mark Twain, quote from Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World
“These descriptions do really state the truth- as nearly as the limitations of language will allow. But language is a treacherous thing, a most unsure vehicle, and it can seldom arrange descriptive words in such a way that they will not inflate the facts-by help of the readers imagination, which is always ready to take a hand, and work for nothing, and do the bulk of it at that.”
― Mark Twain, quote from Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World
“It is easy to make plans in this world; even a cat can do it; and when one is out in those remote oceans it is noticeable that a cat's plans and a man's are worth about the same.”
― Mark Twain, quote from Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World
“We have reached a little altitude where we may look down upon the Indian Thugs with a complacent shudder; and we may even hope for a day, many centuries hence, when our posterity will look down upon us in the same way.”
― Mark Twain, quote from Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World
“There is no such thing as "the Queen's English." The property has gone into the hands of a joint stock company and we own the bulk of the shares!”
― Mark Twain, quote from Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World
“Australasian's custom of speaking of England as "home." It was always pretty to hear it, and often it was said in an unconsciously caressing way that made it touching; in a way which transmuted a sentiment into an embodiment, and made one seem to see Australasia as a young girl stroking mother England's old gray head.”
― Mark Twain, quote from Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World
“We all know about Father Damien, the French priest who voluntarily forsook the world and went to the leper island of Molokai to labor among its population of sorrowful exiles who wait there, in slow-consuming misery, for death to come and release them from their troubles;”
― Mark Twain, quote from Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World
“One is often surprised at the juvenilities which grown people indulge in at sea, and the interest they take in them, and the consuming enjoyment they get out of them.”
― Mark Twain, quote from Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World
“There are many humorous things in the world; among them the white man's notion that he is less savage than the other savages.—[See”
― Mark Twain, quote from Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World
“The average human being is a perverse creature; and when he isn't that, he is a practical joker.”
― Mark Twain, quote from Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World
“...and they come without any inherited prejudices in favor of hoary ignorances made sacred by long descent.”
― Mark Twain, quote from Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World
“to make a pledge of any kind is to declare war against nature; for a pledge is a chain that is always clanking and reminding the wearer of it that he is not a free man.”
― Mark Twain, quote from Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World
Mark Twain
Born place: in Florida, Missouri, The United States
Born date November 30, 1835
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― Brandon Sanderson, quote from The Way of Kings, Part 1
“One black man, overcome by emotion, dropped to his knees, prompting the president to conduct a curbside colloquium on the meaning of emancipation. “Don’t kneel to me,” said the president. “That is not right. You must kneel to God only, and thank Him for the liberty you will enjoy hereafter.”
― Jay Winik, quote from April 1865: The Month That Saved America
“I'm going to lay it out straight for you here, Carson. And the reason that I'm going to do that is because I have every confidence that it will scare you off badly enough that I can then finish my drink in peace, and we can part as acquaintances who simply have nothing in common."
He raised one eyebrow and I joined my hands in my lap, tilting my head as I continued.
"I'm the kind of girl who wants to get married in a big, white dress, wearing my grandma's pearls. I want a husband who love me and is faithful to me. I want him to come home me every night, and I don't want to have to worry if he's doing his secretary, because he's the kind of man who has too much honor to do that. I want to wait a year and then I want to start trying for the two kids that we'll eventually have, a girl and a boy. And when we have those kids, I do not want, one day, to have to explain why their daddy is on the internet having relations with everyone from College Honeys to Cougars Gone Wild for money. I want to throw a cartoon themed birthday party at a jump house for my six year old, not mark the occasion by explaining what a "money shot" is. I have a feeling your life goals are somewhat different than mine. And by 'somewhat,' I mean, utterly and completely. Does that explain why it would be a waste of time for both of us to continue being in each other's presence?" Chapter 1”
― Mia Sheridan, quote from Stinger
“...beneath it all, religion has always been the fuel that keeps the furnaces of intolerance and hatred burning. And it holds us back from better things, but mostly from coming to terms with the truth about who we've become, from embracing everything science has taught us and continues to teach us, from forcing us to make ourselves accountable for our own actions.”
― Raymond Khoury, quote from The Last Templar
“One potion is drunk by the person that will become the host, the second is drunk by the one who needs the host. His body would disappear and his essence would be soaked up into the host.”
― Adrienne Woods, quote from Frostbite
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