Quote

As a rule we develop a borrowed European idea forward, and ... Europe develops a borrowed American idea backwards.

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
Idea
Borrowed
Ideas
Backwards
European
Develop
Rule
Forward
Europe
American
Develops

More quotes by Mark Twain

Image
A powerful agent is the right word: it lights the reader's way and makes it plain.
Mark Twain
Image
The Creator made Italy from designs by Michelangelo.
Mark Twain
Image
If ever you've been down in the dumps, hear these iconic authors share with you more than their writing wisdom.
Mark Twain
Image
God was left out of the Constitution, but was furnished a front seat in this nations currency. (In God we Trust) is a lie, this nations trust has always been with the dollar.
Mark Twain
Image
There are those who scoff at the schoolboy, calling him frivolous and shallow: Yet it was the schoolboy who said 'Faith is believing what you know ain't so'.
Mark Twain
Image
It is not in the least likely that any life has ever been lived which was not a failure in the secret judgment of the person who lived it.
Mark Twain
Image
A dozen direct censures are easier to bear than one morganatic compliment.
Mark Twain
Image
We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it - and stop there.
Mark Twain
Image
Congress: America's only true criminal class.
Mark Twain
Image
Dates are hard to remember because they consist of figures figures are monotonously unstriking in appearance, and they don't take hold, they form no pictures, and so they give the eye no chance to help. Pictures are the thing. Pictures can make dates stick.
Mark Twain
Image
I don't believe there is anything in the whole earth that you can't learn in Berlin except the German language.
Mark Twain
Image
The best cure for Christianity is reading the Bible.
Mark Twain
Image
If you are with the quality, or at a funeral, or trying to go to sleep when you ain't sleepy - if you are anywheres where it won't do for you to scratch, why you will itch all over in upwards of a thousand places.
Mark Twain
Image
No man that has ever lived has done a thing to please God--primarily. It was done to please himself, then God next.
Mark Twain
Image
This autobiography of mine is a mirror, and I am looking at myself in it all the time. Incidentally I notice the people that pass along at my back - I get glimpses of them in the mirror - and whenever they say or do anything that can help advertise me and flatter me and raise me in my own estimation, I set these things down in my autobiography.
Mark Twain
Image
The house was as empty as a beer closet in premises where painters have been at work.
Mark Twain
Image
Suppose you were an idiot, and suppose you were a member of Congress but I repeat myself.
Mark Twain
Image
Man can seldom - very, very, seldom - fight a winning fight against his training the odds are too heavy.
Mark Twain
Image
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
Image
When a teacher calls a boy by his entire name, it means trouble.
Mark Twain