Mark Twain

Mark Twain was born in Florida, Missouri on 30 November 1835, the sixth child born to Jane Lampton (1803-1890) and John Marshall Clemens (1798-1847). In 1839 the Twain family moved to their Hill Street home, now the Mark Twain Boyhood Home and Museum with its famous whitewashed fence, in the bustling port city of Hannibal, Missouri. Situated on the banks of the Mississippi river it would later provide a model for the fictitious town of St. Petersburg in Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer. Read more..

• God made the Idiot for practice, and then He made the School Board.
• Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company.
• I don't like to commit myself about heaven and hell - you see, I have friends in both places.
• It ain't those parts of the Bible that I can't understand that bother me, it is the parts that I do understand.
• It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.
• It's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog.
• Man - a creature made at the end of the week's work when God was tired.
• Man will do many things to get himself loved, he will do all things to get himself envied.
• Only one thing is impossible for God: To find any sense in any copyright law on the planet.
• The Christian's Bible is a drug store. Its contents remain the same, but the medical practice changes.
• The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it.
• 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.
• We are all alike, on the inside.
• What a good thing Adam had. When he said a good thing he knew nobody had said it before.
• When people do not respect us we are sharply offended; yet in his private heart no man much respects himself.
• When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained.
• You can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.
• Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.
• But who prays for Satan? Who, in eighteen centuries, has had the common humanity to pray for the one sinner that needed it most?
• 'Classic.' A book which people praise and don't read.
• All right, then, I'll go to hell.