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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“Rudeness was a sign of weakness. Grace stemmed from power, the power to accept anything and move on.”
― Robin Wasserman, quote from Skinned
“Anyway, they went and built this silly housing project, with us living right across the street from it. Some of the children from the housing project got into trouble. You can't just take people who don't have anything, don't know what they're doing, pack them in a bunch of buildings, and expect it's going to all work out somehow.
- Sadie”
― Sarah L. Delany, quote from Having Our Say: The Delany Sisters' First 100 Years
“Never will she be mine; never. I never brought a flush to her cheek, and it is not I who now have made it so chalk-white. And never will she slip across the street in the night, with anxiety in her heart and a letter to me.
Life has passed me by.
[..] I have got new curtains for my study; pure white. When I awoke this morning, I first thought it had been snowing. In my room the light was exactly as it is after the first fall of snow. I even fancied I caught the scent of snow freshly fallen. And soon it will come, the snow. One feels it in the air.
It will be welcome. Let it come. Let it fall.”
― Hjalmar Söderberg, quote from Doctor Glas
“My father once made us," she began, "keep a diary, in two columns; on one side we were to put down in the morning what we thought would be the course and events of the coming day, and at night we were to put down on the other side what really had happened. It would be to some people rather a sad way of telling their lives," (a tear dropped upon my hand at these words) - "I don't mean that mine has been sad, only so very different to what I expected.”
― Elizabeth Gaskell, quote from Cranford
“You said earlier today that you wanted to talk about something,” Halt said. Crowley nodded, gathering his thoughts before he began. “We seem to share a lot of the same skills,” he said. “And the same weapons. I noticed you carry a saxe knife and a throwing knife like mine. I wondered where you came by them.” Crowley, of course, carried his two knives in the distinctive Ranger-issue double scabbard. Halt’s were in separate scabbards, placed close together on the left side of his belt. He glanced at them now, where the belt was draped over a rock beside the campfire. “My mentor gave them to me,” he said. “He was a Ranger, like you.” Crowley sat up at that piece of information. “A Ranger?” he said. “In Hibernia? What was his name?” “He called himself Pritchard. He was an amazing man.” “He was indeed,” Crowley affirmed, and now it was Halt’s turn to look surprised. “You knew him?” Crowley nodded eagerly. “I was his apprentice for five years. He taught me everything I know. How did you come to meet him?” “He turned up at Du . . . Droghela, some three years ago. He took me under his wing and taught me silent movement, knife work, tracking and the rest. I could already shoot, but he tightened up my technique quite a bit.” Crowley noticed the hesitation and correction when Halt mentioned the name of the place where he’d met Pritchard. But he let it pass. “Yes. He was very big on technique.” “And practice,” Halt agreed. Crowley smiled at the memory of his old teacher. “He had a saying. An ordinary archer practices until he gets it right. A Ranger—” “Practices until he never gets it wrong.” Halt”
― John Flanagan, quote from The Lost Stories
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