Mark Twain_quotes

Unit Six Mark Twain

The following are Mark Twain’s quotes. Read each one carefully and select 10 from them (copy them into your exercise book). Paraphrase each of them in your words and then give brief comments. You should write down what truth they speak about and Mark Twain’s purpose and attitude when speaking of each quote. An example is provided for you.

Example:

1. A banker is a fellow who lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining, but wants

it back the minute it begins to rain.

Paraphrase: A banker is such a person who offers to help you when your financial conditions are good, but turns mean and harsh at the instant when you are in trouble. Comment: Mark Twain points out the evil nature of bankers here. He expresses his dislike for such people and sounds quite contemptuous of them.

2. A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes. 3. Always acknowledge a fault. This will throw those in authority off their guard and give you an opportunity to commit more.

4. An Englishman is a person who does things because they have been done before. An American is a person who does things because they haven't been done before. 5. Barring that natural expression of villainy which we all have, the man looked honest enough.

6. Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint.

7. Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society. 8. Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear - not absence of fear.

9. Do something every day that you don't want to do; this is the golden rule for acquiring the habit of doing your duty without pain.

10. Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.

11. Don't part with your illusions. When they are gone you may still exist, but you have ceased to live.

12. Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please.

13. Grief can take care of itself, but to get the full value of a joy you must have somebody to divide it with.

14. Honesty is the best policy - when there is money in it.

15. I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying that I approved of it. 16. I have never let my schooling interfere with my education. 17. I have never taken any exercise except sleeping and resting.

18. 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.

19. If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man.

20. If you tell the truth you don't have to remember anything.

21. In Paris they simply stared when I spoke to them in French; I never did succeed in making those idiots understand their language.

22. In religion and politics, people's beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second hand, and without examination.

23. In the first place, God made idiots. That was for practice. Then he made school boards.

24. It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly American criminal class except Congress.

25. It is better to deserve honors and not have them than to have them and not to deserve them.

26. It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.

27. It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare.

28. It usually takes more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech. 29. It was wonderful to find America, but it would have been more wonderful to miss it.

30. Just the omission of Jane Austen's books alone would make a fairly good library out of a library that hadn't a book in it.

31. Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great. 32. Let us so live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.

33. Most people are bothered by those passages of Scripture they do not understand, but the passages that bother me are those I do understand.

34. Never put off until tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow. 35. Often it does seem a pity that Noah and his party did not miss the boat.

36. Part of the secret of success in life is to eat what you like and let the food fight it out inside.

37. The man who doesn't read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them.

38. The right word may be effective, but no word was ever as effective as a rightly timed pause.

39. The worst loneliness is not to be comfortable with yourself. 40. Truth is more of a stranger than fiction.

41. We have a criminal jury system which is superior to any in the world; and its efficiency is only marred by the difficulty of finding twelve men every day who don't know anything and can't read.

42. When I was younger, I could remember anything, whether it had happened or not.

43. When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained.

44. Whenever you find that you are on the side of the majority, it is time to reform. 45. He had discovered a great law of human action, without knowing it - namely, 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55.

that in order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to obtain.

The radical invents the views. When he has worn them out the conservative adopts them.

Many a small thing has been made large by the right kind of advertising.

The history of our race, and each individual's experience, are sown thick with evidence that a truth is not hard to kill and that a lie told well is immortal.

A human being has a natural desire to have more of a good thing than he needs. It takes your enemy and your friend, working together, to hurt you: the one to slander you, and the other to get the news to you.

Good breeding consists of concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of the other person.

The holy passion of Friendship is of so sweet and steady and loyal and enduring a nature that it will last through a whole lifetime, if not asked to lend money. A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.

Laws are sand, customs are rock. Laws can be evaded and punishment escaped but an openly transgressed custom brings sure punishment.

The fact that man knows right from wrong proves his intellectual superiority to other creatures; but the fact that he can do wrong proves his moral inferiority to any creature that cannot.

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