Mark Twain

We Americans… bear the ark of liberties of the world.

We have not the reverent feeling for the rainbow that a savage has, because we know how it is made. We have lost as much as we gained by prying into that matter.

Gratitude is a debt which usually goes on accumulating like blackmail; the more you pay, the more is exacted. In time, you are made to realize that the kindness done you is become a curse and you wish it had not happened.

She was not quite what you would call refined. She was not quite what you would call unrefined. She was the kind of person that keeps a parrot.

An average English word is four letters and a half. By hard, honest labor I’ve dug all the large words out of my vocabulary and shaved it down till the average is three and a half… I never write metropolis for seven cents, because I can get the same money for city. I never write policeman, because I can get the same price for cop…. I never write valetudinarian at all, for not even hunger and wretchedness can humble me to the point where I will do a word like that for seven cents; I wouldn’t do it for fifteen.

A soiled baby, with a neglected nose, cannot be conscientiously regarded as a thing of beauty.

Those who believe in telekinetics, raise my hand.

I don’t mind what language an opera is sung in so long as it is a language I don’t understand.

The only Zen you find on the tops of mountains is the Zen you bring up there.

I tried practicing for a few weeks and ended up playing too fast.

No one looks stupid when they’re having fun!

Communism must be like one big phone company.

I took a speed reading course and read ‘War and Peace’ in twenty minutes. It involves Russia.

My wife and I were happy for twenty years. Then we met.

There is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good humor.

I have won several prizes as the world’s slowest alto player, as well as a special award in 1961 for quietness.

If God wanted us to fly, He would have given us tickets.

We’ve heard that a million monkeys at a million keyboards could produce the complete works of Shakespeare; now, thanks to the Internet, we know that is not true.

You know, as a comedian your body has to be – I need to think of a better term than ‘up for grabs’ – but you kind of use whatever you have to get the laugh. And if you’re worrying about how you look… Vanity is the death of comedy.

I remember Tina Fey wrote a play about Catherine the Great f**king a horse and I thought, ‘That lady is hot stuff, I wanna know her.’

After twelve years of therapy my psychiatrist said something that brought tears to my eyes. He said, ‘No hablo ingles.’