I am not the editor of a newspaper and shall always try to do right and be good so that God will not make me one.
- Mark Twain

I am opposed to millionaires, but it would be dangerous to offer me the position.
- Mark Twain

I believe that our Heavenly Father created the monkey because he was disappointed in man.
- Mark Twain

I bring you this stately matron named Christendom, returning bedraggled, besmirched, and dishonored from pirate raids in Kiao-Chow, Manchuria, South Africa, and the Philippines, with her soul full of meanness, her pocket full of boodle, and her mouth full of pious hypocrisies. Give her soap and a towel, but hide the looking-glass.
- Mark Twain

I can live for two months on a good compliment.
- Mark Twain

I do not read anything but history and biography.
- Mark Twain

I don't believe any of you have ever read Paradise Lost, and you don't want to. That's something that you just want to take on trust. It's a classic . . . something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.
- Mark Twain

I found out that I was a Christian for revenue only and I could not bear the thought of that, it was so ignoble.
- Mark Twain

I have been complimented myself a great many times, and they always embarrass me - I always feel that they have not said enough.
- Mark Twain

(70th birthday speech) I have had a great many birthdays in my time. I remember the first one very well, and I always think of it with indignation; everything was so crude, unaesthetic, primeval. Nothing like this at all. No proper appreciative preparation made; nothing really ready. Now, for a person born with high and delicate instincts-why, even the cradle wasn't whitewashed-nothing ready at all. I hadn't any hair, I hadn't any teeth, I hadn't any clothes, I had to go to my first banquet just like that. Well, everybody came swarming in. It was the merest little bit of a village-hardly that, just a little hamlet, in the backwoods of Missouri, where nothing ever happened, and the people were all interested, and they all came; they looked me over to see if there was anything fresh in my line. Why, nothing ever happened in that village-I-why, I was the only thing that had really happened there for months and months and months; And although I say it myself that shouldn't, I came the nearest to being a real event that had happened in that village in more than two years. Well, those people came, they came with that curiosity which is so provincial, with that frankness which also is so provincial, and they examined me all around and gave their opinion. Nobody asked them, and I shouldn't have minded if anybody had paid me a compliment, but nobody did. Their opinions were all just green with prejudice, and I feel those opinions to this day. Well, I stood that as long as- well, you know I was born courteous and I stood it to the limit. I stood it an hour, and then the worm turned. I was the worm; it was my turn to turn, and I turned. I knew very well the strength of my position; I knew that I was the only spotlessly pure and innocent person in that whole town, and I came out and said so. And they could not say a word. It was so true, They blushed; they were embarrassed.
- Mark Twain