Quote

Delicacy - a sad, sad false delicacy - robs literature of the two best things among its belongings: Family-circle narratives & obscene stories.

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
Things
Narrative
Belongings
False
Robs
Among
Narratives
Literature
Delicacy
Family
Obscene
Two
Belonging
Stories
Circle
Best
Circles

More quotes by Mark Twain

Image
First catch your Boer, then kick him.
Mark Twain
Image
Life should begin with age and its privileges and accumulations, and end with youth and its capacity to splendidly enjoy such advantages.
Mark Twain
Image
In my age, as in my youth, night brings me many a deep remorse. I realize that from the cradle up I have been like the rest of the race - never quite sane in the night.
Mark Twain
Image
English humor is hard to appreciate, though, unless you are trained to it. The English papers, in reporting my speeches, always put 'laughter' in the wrong place.
Mark Twain
Image
That's the difference between governments and individuals. Governments don't care, individuals do.
Mark Twain
Image
A friend is someone who stays in when the rest of the world has gone out.
Mark Twain
Image
Damn the subjunctive. It brings all our writers to shame.
Mark Twain
Image
Methuselah lived to be 969 years old . You boys and girls will see more in the next fifty years than Methuselah saw in his whole lifetime.
Mark Twain
Image
What work I have done I have done because it has been play. If it had been work I shouldn't have done it. . . . The work that is really a man's own work is play and not work at all. . . . When we talk about the great workers of the world we really mean the great players of the world.
Mark Twain
Image
It is at our mother's knee that we acquire our noblest and truest and highest ideals.
Mark Twain
Image
It's an epitome of life. The first half of it consists of the capacity to enjoy without the chance the last half consists of the chance without the capacity.
Mark Twain
Image
The cigar-box which the European calls a 'lift' needs but to be compared with our elevators to be appreciated. The lift stops to reflect between floors. That is all right in a hearse, but not in elevators. The American elevator acts like a man's patent purge-it works.
Mark Twain
Image
Patriotism is merely a religion-love of country, worship of country, devotion to the country's flag and honor and welfare.
Mark Twain
Image
A jay hasnt got any more principle than a Congressman. A jay will lie, a jay will steal, a jay will deceive, a jay will betray and four times out of five, a jay will go back on his solemnest promise.
Mark Twain
Image
Vote: The only commodity that is peddleable without a license.
Mark Twain
Image
Repartee is something we think of twenty-four hours too late.
Mark Twain
Image
There are two times in a man's life when he should not speculate: when he can't afford it, and when he can.
Mark Twain
Image
Do you reckon Tom Sawyer was satisfied after all them adventures?
Mark Twain
Image
Greece is a bleak, unsmiling desert, without agriculture, manufactures or commerce, apparently. What supports its poverty-stricken people or its Government, is a mystery.
Mark Twain
Image
We can secure other people's approval, if we do right and try hard but our own is worth a hundred of it, and no way has been found out of securing that.
Mark Twain