Quotes from The Autobiography of Mark Twain

“What a wee little part of a person's life are his acts and his words! His real life is lead in his head, and is known to none but himself. All day long, and every day, the mill of his brain is grinding, and his thoughts, (which are but the mute articulation of his feelings,) not those other things are his history. His acts and his words are merely the visible thin crust of his world, with its scattered snow summits and its vacant wastes of water-and they are so trifling a part of his bulk! a mere skin enveloping it. The mass of him is hidden-it and its volcanic fires that toss and boil, and never rest, night nor day. These are his life, and they are not written, and cannot be written.”
― Mark Twain, quote from The Autobiography of Mark Twain

“We had a little slave boy whom we had hired from some one, there in Hannibal. He was from the Eastern Shore of Maryland, and had been brought away from his family and his friends, half way across the American continent, and sold. He was a cheery spirit, innocent and gentle, and the noisiest creature that ever was, perhaps. All day long he was singing, whistling, yelling, whooping, laughing - it was maddening, devastating, unendurable. At last, one day, I lost all my temper, and went raging to my mother, and said Sandy had been singing for an hour without a single break, and I couldn't stand it, and wouldn't she please shut him up.
The tears came into her eyes, and her lip trembled, and she said something like this - 'Poor thing, when he sings, it shows that he is not remembering, and that comforts me; but when he is still, I am afraid he is thinking, and I cannot bear it. He will never see his mother again; if he can sing, I must not hinder it, but be thankful for it. If you were older, you would understand me; then that friendless child's noise would make you glad.' It was a simple speech, and made up of small words, but it went home, and Sandy's noise was not a trouble to me any more.”
― Mark Twain, quote from The Autobiography of Mark Twain

“A myriad of men are born; they labor and sweat and struggle for bread; they squabble and scold and fight; they scramble for little mean advantages over each other. Age creeps upon them; infirmities follow; shames and humiliations bring down their prides and their vanities. Those they love are taken from them and the joy of life is turned to aching grief. The burden of pain, care, misery, grows heavier year by year. At length ambition is dead; pride is dead; vanity is dead; longing for release is in their place. It comes at last - the only unpoisoned gift ever had for them - and they vanish from a world where they were of no consequence; where they achieved nothing; where they were a mistake and a failure and a foolishness; where they have left no sign that have existed - a world which will lament them a day and forget them forever. Then another myriad takes their place and copies all they did and goes along the same profitless road and vanishes as they vanished - to make room for another and another and a million other myriads to follow the same arid path through the same desert and accomplish what the first myriad and all the myriads that came after it accomplished - nothing!”
― Mark Twain, quote from The Autobiography of Mark Twain

“But it seems to be a law of human constitution that those that deserve shall not have and those that do not deserve shall get everything that is worth having.”
― Mark Twain, quote from The Autobiography of Mark Twain

“Well, mamma, the Indians believed they knew, but now we know they were wrong. By and by it can turn out that we are wrong. So now I only pray that there might be a God and a heaven – or something better.”
― Mark Twain, quote from The Autobiography of Mark Twain

“Mark Twain describes how his friend Ralph Keeler introduced him at the start of a lecture: " 'I don't know anything about this man. At least I know only two things; one is, he hasn't been in the penitentiary, and the other is (after a pause, and almost sadly), I don't know why.”
― Mark Twain, quote from The Autobiography of Mark Twain

“I believe our Heavenly Father invented man because he was disappointed in the monkey. I believe that whenever a human being, of even the highest intelligence and culture, delivers an opinion upon a matter apart from his particular and especial line of interest, training and experience, it will always be an opinion of so foolish and so valueless a sort that it can be depended upon to suggest our Heavenly Father that the human being is another disappointment and that he is no considerable improvement upon the monkey.”
― Mark Twain, quote from The Autobiography of Mark Twain

“congress - that great, benevolent asylum for the helpless”
― Mark Twain, quote from The Autobiography of Mark Twain

“Covek je stvorenje nacinjeno na kraju radne nedelje kad se Bog umorio. I cemu je trebalo celi ovaj globus stvarati u zurbi, za sest dana. Da se potrosilo malo vise vremena, svet se ne bi trebalo toliko popravljati i poboljsavati. Slicno se desava kad na brzinu sklepas kucu, pa u zurbi zaboravis WC, ili spremiste za metle, i to onda moras naknadno dograditi, bez obzira koliko te to kostalo novaca ili zivaca.”
― Mark Twain, quote from The Autobiography of Mark Twain

“My mother had a great deal of trouble with me , but I think she enjoyed it”
― Mark Twain, quote from The Autobiography of Mark Twain

“It is never wrong to do the right thing.”
― Mark Twain, quote from The Autobiography of Mark Twain

“I was as hurt by this as if I were engaged in some honest occupation. There is nothing surprising about this. Human beings feel dishonor the most, sometimes, when they most deserve it.”
― Mark Twain, quote from The Autobiography of Mark Twain

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Popular quotes

“Once I had found the courage to tell Rebecca about the children in my head, it wasn't so hard in the coming months to tell Roberta.
On the train from Huddersfield one day in May I made a roll call of the usual suspects: Baby Alice; Alice 2, who was two years old and liked to suck sticky lollipops; Billy; Samuel; Shirley; Kato; and the enigmatic Eliza. There was boy I would grow particularly fond of named limbo, who was ten, but like Eliza he was still forming. There were others without names or specific behaviour traits. I didn't want to confuse the issue with this crowd of 'others' and just counted off the major players with their names, ages and personalities, which Roberta scribbled down on a pad. Then she looked slightly embarrassed. 'You know, I've met Billy on a few occasions, and Samuel once too,' she said. 'You're joking.' I felt betrayed. 'Why didn't you tell me?' 'I wanted it to come from you, Alice, when you were ready.' For some reason I pulled up my sleeves and showed he my arms. 'That's Kato,' I said, 'or Shirley.' She looked a bit pale as she studied the scars. I had feeling she didn't know what to say. The problem with counsellors is that they are trained to listen, not to give advice or diagnosis. We sat there with my arms extended over the void between us like evidence in court, then I pushed down my sleeves again. 'I'm so sorry, Alice,' she said finally and I shrugged. 'It's not your fault, is it?' Now she shrugged, and we were quiet once more.”
― quote from Today I'm Alice: Nine Personalities, One Tortured Mind

“Pleasure has turned into habit much more quickly than I should have ever thought possible.”
― Théophile Gautier, quote from Mademoiselle de Maupin

“A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral.”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, quote from Der kleine Prinz

“If designers and researchers do not sometimes fail, it is a sign that they are not trying hard enough—they are not thinking the great creative thoughts that will provide breakthroughs in how we do things. It is possible to avoid failure, to always be safe. But that is also the route to a dull, uninteresting life.”
― Donald A. Norman, quote from Design of Everyday Things: Revised and Expanded Edition (Revised)

“Bears are simultaneously so graceful and so strong. Bears know who they are, but they often don’t know who you are, which is why they kill you.”
― quote from Sleepwalk With Me and Other Painfully True Stories

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BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

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