Great Throughts Treasury

"I do not like work even when someone else does it."

"I do not like an injurious lie, except when it injures somebody else."

"I do not take any credit to my better-balanced head because I never went crazy on Presbyterianism. We go too slow for that. You never see us ranting and shouting and tearing up the ground, You never heard of a Presbyterian going crazy on religion. Notice us, and you will see how we do. We get up of a Sunday morning and put on the best harness we have got and trip cheerfully down town; we subside into solemnity and enter the church; we stand up and duck our heads and bear down on a hymn book propped on the pew in front when the minister prays; we stand up again while our hired choir are singing, and look in the hymn book and check off the verses to see that they don't shirk any of the stanzas; we sit silent and grave while the minister is preaching, and count the waterfalls and bonnets furtively, and catch flies; we grab our hats and bonnets when the benediction is begun; when it is finished, we shove, so to speak. No frenzy, no fanaticism --no skirmishing; everything perfectly serene. You never see any of us Presbyterians getting in a sweat about religion and trying to massacre the neighbors. Let us all be content with the tried and safe old regular religions, and take no chances on wildcat."

"I do not wish any reward but to know I have done the right thing."

"I don?t like to commit myself about heaven and hell ? you see, I have friends in both places."

"I don't have time to write you a short letter, so I'm writing you a long one instead."

"I don't know anything that mars a good literature so completely as too much truth. Facts contain a great deal of poetry, but you can't use too many of them without damaging your literature."

"I don't know of a single foreign product that enters this country untaxed, except the answer to prayer."

"I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it."

"I don't mind what the opposition say of me so long as they don't tell the truth about me."

"I don't see any use in having a uniform and arbitrary way of spelling words. We might as well make all clothes alike and cook all dishes alike. Sameness is tiresome; variety is pleasing."

"I don't think there ever was a lazy man in this world. Every man has some sort of gift, and he prizes that gift beyond all others. He may be a professional billiard-player, or a Paderewski, or a poet--I don't care what it is. But whatever it is, he takes a native delight in exploiting that gift, and you will find it is difficult to beguile him away from it. Well, there are thousands of other interests occupying other men, but those interests don't appeal to the special tastes of the billiard champion or Paderewski. They are set down, therefore, as too lazy to do that or do this--to do, in short what they have no taste or inclination to do. In that sense, then I am phenomenally lazy. But when it comes to writing a book--I am not lazy. My family find it difficult to dig me out of my chair."

"I don't see no p'ints about that frog that's any better'n any other frog."

"I felt so lonesome I most wished I was dead. The stars were shining, and the leaves rustled in the woods ever so mournful; and I heard an owl, away off, who-whooing about somebody that was dead, and a whippowill and a dog crying about somebody that was going to die;"

"I don't want no better book than what your face is."

"I find that principles have no real force except when one is well fed."

"I don't like to commit myself about heaven and hell - you see, I have friends in both places."

"I don't give a damn for a man that can only spell a word one way."

"I find that the further I go back, the better things were, whether they happened or not."

"I freighted a leaf with a mental message for the friends at home, and dropped it in the stream. But I put no stamp on it and it was held for postage somewhere."

"I had been to school most all the time, and could spell, and read, and write just a little, and could say the multiplication table up to six times seven is thirty-five, and I don't reckon I could ever get any further than that if I was to live forever. I don't take no stock in mathematics, anyway."

"I hain't ever seen her since that time that I see her go out of that door; no, I hain't ever seen her since, but I reckon I've thought of her a many and a many a million times, and of her saying she would pray for me; and if ever I'd a thought it would do any good for me to pray for HER, blamed if I wouldn't a done it or bust."

"I have a higher and grander standard of principle than George Washington. He could not lie; I can, but I won't."

"I have a prodigious quantity of mind; it takes me as much as a week sometimes to make it up."

"I have attended operas, whenever I could not help it, for fourteen years now; I am sure I know of no agony comparable to the listening to an unfamiliar opera."

"I have been an author for 20 years and an ass for 55."

"I have been complimented many times and they always embarrass me; I always feel that they have not said enough."

"I have been through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened."

"I have found out that there ain't no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than to travel with them."

"I have found solace in profanity unexcelled even by prayer."

"I have made it a rule never to smoke more than one cigar at a time. It has always been my rule never to smoke when asleep, and never to refrain when awake."

"I have never heard enough classical music to be able to enjoy it; and the simple truth is, I detest it. Not mildly, but will all my heart. To me an opera is the very climax and cap-stone of the absurd, the fantastic the unjustifiable. I hate the very name of opera - partly because of the nights of suffering I have endured in its presence, and partly because I want to love it and can't."

"I have my values, and if you don't like them, well I've got some others."

"I have no color prejudices nor caste prejudices nor creed prejudices. All I care to know is that a man is a human being, and that is enough for me; he can't be any worse."

"I have never tried, in even one single little instance, to help cultivate the cultivated classes. I was not equipped for it either by native gifts or training. And I never had any ambition in that direction, but always hunted for bigger game--the masses."

"I have not a particle of confidence in a man who has no redeeming vices."

"I find that, as a rule, when a thing is a wonder to us it is not because of what we see in it, but because of what others have seen in it. We get almost all our wonders at second hand."

"I have replaced his tin life with a silver-gilt fiction."

"I have seen it stated that no expert is quick enough to run over a dog; that a dog is always able to skip out of his way. I think that that may be true; but I think that the reason he couldn't run over the dog was because he was trying to. I did not try to run over any dog. But I ran over every dog that came along."

"I have seen slower people than I am and more deliberate... and even quieter, and more listless, and lazier people than I am. But they were dead."

"I have stopped smoking now and then, for a few months at a time, but it was not on principle, it was only to show off; it was to pulverize those critics who said I was a slave to my habits and couldn''t break my bonds"

"I have too much respect for the truth to drag it out on every trifling occasion."

"I have no special regard for Satan; but, I can at least claim that I have no prejudice against him. It may even be that I lean a little his way, on account of his not having a fair show. All religions issue bibles against him, and say the most injurious things about him, but we never hear his side. We have none but the evidence for the prosecution, and yet we have rendered the verdict. To my mind, this is irregular. It is un-English, it is un-American; it is French."

"I haven't a particle of confidence in a man who has no redeeming petty vices whatsoever."

"I have spent most of my life worrying about things that have never happened"

"I have been studying the traits and dispositions of the lower animals (so called) and contrasting them with the traits and dispositions of man. I find the result humiliating to me."

"I have been on the verge of being an angel all my life, but it's never happened yet."

"I have no race prejudice. I think I have no color prejudices or caste prejudices nor creed prejudices. Indeed, I know it. I can stand any society. All that I care to know is that a man is a human being -- that is enough for me; he can't be any worse."

"I have never taken any exercise except sleeping and resting."

"I have witnessed and greatly enjoyed the first act of everything which Wagner created, but the effect on me has always been so powerful that one act was quite sufficient; whenever I have witnessed two acts I have gone away physically exhausted; and whenever I have ventured an entire opera the result has been the next thing to suicide."