"I was sorry to have my name mentioned as one of the great authors, because they have a sad habit of dying off. Chaucer is dead, Spencer is dead, so is Milton, so is Shakespeare, and I’m not feeling so well myself."

• The History of the Savage Club, speech (1899).

"[A] classic - something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read."
* quoting "Professor Winchester"

"Always do right. This will gratify some people, and astonish the rest."

"To put it in rude, plain, unpalatable words — true patriotism, real patriotism: loyalty not to a Family and a Fiction, but a loyalty to the Nation itself!

..."Remember this, take this to heart, live by it, die for it if necessary: that our patriotism is medieval, outworn, obsolete; that the modern patriotism, the true patriotism, the only rational patriotism, is loyalty to the Nation ALL the time, loyalty to the Government when it deserves it." [Czar Nicholas II]

"The only reason why God created man is because he was disappointed with the monkey. "

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

"Always acknowledge a fault frankly. This will throw those in authority off their guard and give you opportunity to commit more."

"Loyalty to petrified opinions never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul in this world — and never will. "

- Mark Twain

Mark Twain Biography