If you invent two or three people and turn them loose in your manuscript, something is bound to happen to them - you can't help it; and then it will take you the rest of the book to get them out of the natural consequences of that occurrence, and so first thing you know, there's your book all finished up and never cost you an idea.
- Mark Twain

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.
- Mark Twain

Ignorant people think it's the noise which fighting cats make that is so aggravating, but it ain't so; it's the sickening grammar they use.
- Mark Twain

In all the ages, three-fourths of the support of the great charities has been conscience money.
- Mark Twain

In discarding the monkey and substituting man, our Father in Heaven did the monkey an undeserved injustice.
- Mark Twain

In the first place God made idiots. This was for practice. Then He made School Boards.
- Mark Twain

Irreverence is the champion of liberty and its one sure defense.
- Mark Twain

It (the Bible) is full of interest. It has noble poetry in it; and some clever fables; and some blood-drenched history; and some good morals; and a wealth of obscenity; and upwards of a thousand lies.
- Mark Twain

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

It is believed by everyone that when he was in heaven he was stern, hard, resentful, jealous and cruel, but that when he came down to earth, he became the opposite - sweet, gentle merciful, forgiving. He was a thousand billion times crueler than ever he was in the Old Testament - Meek and gentle? By and by we will examine that popular sarcasm by the light of the hell which he invented.
- Mark Twain