The Complete Works of Mark Twain: The Novels, Short Stories, Essays and Satires, Travel Writing, Non-Fiction, the Complete Letters, the Complete Speeches, and the Autobiography of Mark Twain

by Mark Twain

The children were put to school; at least it was what passed for a school in those days: a place where tender young humanity devoted itself for eight or ten hours a day to learning incomprehensible rubbish by heart out of books and reciting it by rote, like parrots; so that a finished education consisted simply of a permanent headache and the ability to read without stopping to spell the words or take breath.

Some instinct taught Washington that his present lack of money would be an obstruction, though possibly not a bar, to his hopes, and straightway his poverty became a torture to him which cast all his former sufferings under that held into the shade. He longed for riches now as he had never longed for them before.

Isn't it a sort of evil that so naturally twists a man's love into this kind of desperate greed?

She had more than her rightful share of practical good sense, but still she was human; and to be human is to have one’s little modicum of romance secreted away in one’s composition.

Philip was a New England boy and had graduated at Yale; he had not carried off with him all the learning of that venerable institution, but he knew some things that were not in the regular course of study. A very good use of the English language and considerable knowledge of its literature was one of them; he could sing a song very well, not in time to be sure, but with enthusiasm; he could make a magnetic speech at a moment’s notice in the class room, the debating society, or upon any fence or drygoods box that was convenient; he could lift himself by one arm, and do the giant swing in the gymnasium; he could strike out from his left shoulder; he could handle an oar like a professional and pull stroke in a winning race. Philip had a good appetite, a sunny temper, and a clear hearty laugh. He had brown hair, hazel eyes set wide apart, a broad but not high forehead, and a fresh winning face. He was six feet high, with broad shoulders, long legs and a swinging gait; one of those loose-jointed, capable fellows, who saunter into the world with a free air and usually make a stir in whatever company they enter.

Ruth had an idea that a large portion of the world lived by getting the rest of the world into schemes.

Sums up both business and politics quite nicely.

That building is the capitol; gossips will tell you that by the original estimates it was to cost $12,000,000, and that the government did come within $21,200,000 of building it for that sum.

There is something good and motherly about Washington, the grand old benevolent National Asylum for the Helpless.

Beautiful credit! The foundation of modern society. Who shall say that this is not the golden age of mutual trust, of unlimited reliance upon human promises? That is a peculiar condition of society which enables a whole nation to instantly recognize point and meaning in the familiar newspaper anecdote, which puts into the mouth of a distinguished speculator in lands and mines this remark: — ”I wasn’t worth a cent two years ago, and now I owe two millions of dollars.”

Ruth had met him, when he first came, with a cordial frankness, and her manner continued entirely unrestrained. She neither sought his company nor avoided it, and this perfectly level treatment irritated him more than any other could have done. It was impossible to advance much in love-making with one who offered no obstacles, had no concealments and no embarrassments, and whom any approach to sentimentality would be quite likely to set into a fit of laughter.

I do belive that I present this same problem to the women who occasionally try their wiles on me.

Philip feared that he wasn’t a hero. He did not know out of what materials a woman can construct a hero, when she is in the creative mood.

The appropriation which he had engineered through Congress for the maintenance of the Indians in his Territory would have made all those savages rich if it had ever got to them.

By and by the newspapers came out with exposures and called Weed and O’Riley “thieves,” — whereupon the people rose as one man (voting repeatedly) and elected the two gentlemen to their proper theatre of action, the New York legislature.

These day receptions were attended by more women than men, and those interested in the problem might have studied the costumes of the ladies present, in view of this fact, to discover whether women dress more for the eyes of women or for effect upon men. It is a very important problem, and has been a good deal discussed, and its solution would form one fixed, philosophical basis, upon which to estimate woman’s character. We are inclined to take a medium ground, and aver that woman dresses to please herself, and in obedience to a law of her own nature.

“And you do love me a little?”

A twit by any other era...

“Damn the woman,” said the Colonel as he picked his way down the steps. “Or,” he added, as his thoughts took a new turn, “I wish my wife was in New Orleans.”

They're made for each other, really.

Vigorous persecution will alone carry a bill sometimes, dear; and when you start with a strong vote in the first place, persecution comes in with double effect. It scares off some of the weak supporters, true, but it soon turns strong ones into stubborn ones. And then, presently, it changes the tide of public opinion. The great public is weak-minded; the great public is sentimental; the great public always turns around and weeps for an odious murderer, and prays for him, and carries flowers to his prison and besieges the governor with appeals to his clemency, as soon as the papers begin to howl for that man’s blood. — In a word, the great putty-hearted public loves to ‘gush,’ and there is no such darling opportunity to gush as a case of persecution affords.”