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A crime persevered in a thousand centuries ceases to be a crime, and becomes a virtue. This is the law of custom, and custom supersedes all other forms of law.
Mark Twain
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Mark Twain
Age: 74 †
Born: 1835
Born: November 30
Died: 1910
Died: April 21
Aphorist
Author
Autobiographer
Humorist
Journalist
Novelist
Opinion Journalist
Prosaist
Science Fiction Writer
Teacher
Florida
Missouri
Samuel Langhorne Clemens
Samuel L. Clemens
Samuel Clemens
Century
Criminals
Virtue
Cease
Law
Forms
Supersedes
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Persevered
Form
Crime
Ceases
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Custom
Thousand
Customs
Becomes
Centuries
More quotes by Mark Twain
I have at last, after several months' experience, made up my mind that [New York] is a splendid desert--a domed and steepled solitude, where the stranger is lonely in the midst of a million of his race.
Mark Twain
We never knew an ignorant person yet but was prejudiced.
Mark Twain
Demagogue--a vessel containing beer and other liquids.
Mark Twain
Delicacy - a sad, sad false delicacy - robs literature of the two best things among its belongings: Family-circle narratives & obscene stories.
Mark Twain
Never be haughty to the humble, never be humble to the haughty.
Mark Twain
In India, 'cold weather' is merely a conventional phrase and has come into use through the necessity of having some way to distinguish between weather which will melt a brass door-knob and weather which will only make it mushy.
Mark Twain
I have made it a rule never to smoke more than one cigar at a time.
Mark Twain
Happiness ain't a thing in itself -it's only a contrast with something that ain't pleasant. And so, as soon as the novelty is over and the force of the contrast dulled, it ain't happiness any longer, and you have to get something fresh.
Mark Twain
The dreamer's valuation of a thing lost - not another man's - is the only standard to measure it by, and his grief for it makes it large and great and fine, and is worthy of our reverence in all cases.
Mark Twain
It was on the 10th day of May - 1884 - that I confessed to age by mounting spectacles for the first time, and in the same hour I renewed my youth, to outward appearance, by mounting a bicycle for the first time. The spectacles stayed on.
Mark Twain
I have thought many times since that if poets when they get discouraged would blow their brains out, they could write very much better when they got well.
Mark Twain
The election makes me think of a story of a man who was dying. He had only two minutes to live, so he sent for a clergyman and asked him, Where is the best place to go to? He was undecided about it. So the minister told him that each place had its advantages--heaven for climate, and hell for society.
Mark Twain
The humorous writer professes to awaken and direct your love, your pity, your kindness--your scorn for untruth, pretension, imposture....He takes upon himself to be the week-day preacher.
Mark Twain
God puts something good and loveable in every man His hands create.
Mark Twain
The vast majority of the race whether savage or civilized, are secretly kind at heart and shrink from inflicting pain, but in the presence of the aggressive and pitiless minority they don't dare to assert themselves.
Mark Twain
Pity is for the living, envy is for the dead. Death, the refuge, the solace, the best and kindliest and most prized friend and benefactor of the erring, the forsaken, the old and weary and broken of heart.
Mark Twain
Principles aren't of much account anyway, except at election time. After that you hang them up to let them season.
Mark Twain
The North thinks it knows how to make corn bread, but this is a gross superstition. Perhaps no bread in the world is quite as good as Southern corn bread, and perhaps no bread in the world is quite as bad as the Northern imitation of it.
Mark Twain
Grief can take care if itself, but to get the full value of a joy you must have somebody to divide it with.
Mark Twain
If I'd seen a playwright ever write an' play at the same time, I'd have given 'em more of a chance at cards. Can I get an 'amen?'
Mark Twain
