Samuel Clemens, known as Mark Twain, was born in Florida, Missouri in 1835. Of the many jobs he held in his lifetime was that of a reporter, a publisher and a riverboat pilot. Twain was a great writer and is best know for The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. His style included humor, satire and adventure. Mark Twain’s personality was funny and out-going but always insightful. He died in 1910 and will be remembered and quoted for a long time.
“Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.”
“Always do right – This will gratify some and astonish the rest.”
“God has put something noble and good into every heart His hand created.”
“Let us endeavor so to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.”
“If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man.”
“It’s not the size of the dog in the fight – it’s the size of the fight in the dog.”
“It is better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than to open it and remove all doubt.”
“Courage is resistance to fear; mastery of fear – not absence of fear.”
“In religion and politics people’s beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination, from ities who have not themselves examined the questions at issue but have taken them at second-hand from other non-examiners, whose opinions about them were not worth a brass farthing.”
“The holy passion of Friendship is of so sweet and steady and loyal and enduring a nature that it will last through a lifetime, if not asked to lend money.”
My father was an amazing man. The older I got, the smarter he got.”
“Don’t go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.”
“It is better to deserve honors and not have them than to have them and not deserve them.”
“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”
“Few sinners are saved after the first 20 minutes of a sermon.”
“The human race has one really effective weapon, and that is laughter.”
“Few things are harder to put up with than a good example.”
“The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them.”