Quote

The laws of Nature take precedence of all human laws. The purpose of all human laws is one - to defeat the laws of Nature. This is the case among all the nations, both civilized and savage. It is a grotesquerie, but when the human race is not grotesque it is because it is asleep and losing its opportunity.

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
Nations
Defeat
Purpose
Laws
Opportunity
Case
Precedence
Nature
Losing
Grotesque
Human
Among
Savage
Humans
Cases
Savages
Take
Law
Asleep
Race
Civilized

More quotes by Mark Twain

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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
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Never argue with people who buy ink by the gallon.
Mark Twain
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The only people that a bank will loan money to is the very people who don't need it.
Mark Twain
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If there wasn't anything to find out, it would be dull. Even trying to find out and not finding out is just as interesting as trying to find out and finding out and I don't know but more so.
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All gentle cant and philosophizing to the contrary notwithstanding, no people in this world ever did achieve their freedom by goody-goody talk and moral suasion: it being immutable law that all revolutions that will succeed, must begin in blood.
Mark Twain
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The way it is now, the asylums can hold the sane people, but if we tried to shut up the insane we should run out of building materials.
Mark Twain
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They all laid their heads together like as many lawyers when they are gettin' ready to prove that a man's heirs ain't got any right to his property.
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I have never examined the subject of humor until now. I am surprised to find how much ground it covers. I have got its divisions and frontiers down on a piece of paper. I find it defined as a production of the brain, as the power of the brain to produce something humorous, and the capacity of percieving humor.
Mark Twain
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By common consent of all the nations and all the ages the most valuable thing in this world is the homage of men, whether deserved or undeserved.
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If you have nothing to say, say nothing.
Mark Twain
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Ignorance, intolerance, egotism, self-assertion, opaque perception, dense and pitiful chuckle headedness - and an almost pathetic unconsciousness of it all, that is what I was at nineteen and twenty.
Mark Twain
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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
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The Book of Mormon is chloroform in print
Mark Twain
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There are basically two types of people. People who accomplish things, and people who claim to have accomplished things. The first group is less crowded.
Mark Twain
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Hero: Person in a book who does things which he can't and girl marries him for it.
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I said there was but one solitary thing about the past worth remembering, and that was the fact that it is past-can't be restored.
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If you had made the acquiring of ignorance the study of your life, you could not have graduated with higher honor than you could to-day.
Mark Twain
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I was standing in our dining-room thinking of nothing in particular, when a cablegram was put into my hand. It said, 'Susy was peacefully released today.' It is one of the mysteries of our nature that a man, all unprepared, can receive a thunder-stroke like that and live.
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Prophesy is a good line of business, but it is full of risks.
Mark Twain
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A banquet is probably the most fatiguing thing in the world except ditchdigging. It is the insanest of all recreations. The inventor of it overlooked no detail that could furnish weariness, distress, harassment, and acute and long-sustained misery of mind and body.
Mark Twain