Quote

Experience of life (not of books) is the only capital usable in such a book as you have attempted one can make no judicious use of this capital while it is new.

Mark Twain

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Use
Experience
Book
Writing
Usable
Make
Judicious
Life
Attempted
Capital
Books

More quotes by Mark Twain

Image
Let us guess that whenever we read a sentence & like it, we unconsciously store it away in our model-chamber & it goes, with the myriad of its fellows, to the building, brick by brick, of the eventual edifice which we call our style.
Mark Twain
Image
Let us be grateful to Adam: he cut us out of the blessing of idleness and won for us the curse of labor.
Mark Twain
Image
All say, ‘how hard it is that we have to die’ -- a strange complaint to come from the mouths of those who have had to live.
Mark Twain
Image
I do not wish any reward but to know I have done the right thing.
Mark Twain
Image
I thoroughly disapprove of duels. If a man should challenge me, I would take him kindly and forgivingly by the hand and lead him to a quiet place and kill him.
Mark Twain
Image
To be good is noble but to show others how to be good is nobler and no trouble.
Mark Twain
Image
We have not the reverent feeling for the rainbow that the savage has, because we know how it is made. We have lost as much as we gained by prying into that matter.
Mark Twain
Image
There is no family in America without a clock, and consequently there is no fair pretext for the usual Sunday medley of dreadful sounds that issues from our steeples.
Mark Twain
Image
I was sorry to have my name mentioned as one of the great authors, because they have a sad habit of dying off. Chaucer is dead, Spencer is dead, so is Milton, so is Shakespeare, and I’m not feeling so well myself.
Mark Twain
Image
To create man was a quaint and original idea, but to add the sheep was tautology.
Mark Twain
Image
If horses knew their strength we should not ride anymore.
Mark Twain
Image
If the man doesn't believe as we do, we say he is a crank, and that settles it. I mean, it does nowadays, because now we can't burn him.
Mark Twain
Image
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities Truth isn't.
Mark Twain
Image
Anyone who can only think of one way to spell a word obviously lacks imagination.
Mark Twain
Image
The minute we get reconciled to a person, how willing we are to throw aside little needless punctilios and pronounce his name right.
Mark Twain
Image
Most writers regard the truth as their most valuable possession, and therefore are most economical in its use.
Mark Twain
Image
Age enlarges and enriches the powers of some musical instruments - notably those of the violin - but it seems to set a piano's teeth on edge.
Mark Twain
Image
Tom appeared on the sidewalk with a bucket of whitewash and a long-handled brush. He surveyed the fence, and all gladness left him and a deep melancholy settled down upon his spirit. Thirty yards of board fence nine feet high. Life to him seemed hollow, and existence but a burden.
Mark Twain
Image
There is nothing so annoying as to have two people talking when you're busy interrupting.
Mark Twain
Image
Whose property is my body? Probably mine. I so regard it. If I experiment with it, who must be answerable? I, not the State. If I choose injudiciously, does the state die? Oh, no.
Mark Twain