A Tramp Abroad Quotes

“That's the difference between governments and individuals. Governments don't care, individuals do.”
― Mark Twain, A Tramp Abroad

“Every noun has a gender, and there is no sense or system in the distribution; so the gender of each must be learned separately and by heart. There is no other way. To do this one has to have a memory like a memorandum-book. In German, a young lady has no sex, while a turnip has. Think what overwrought reverence that shows for the turnip, and what callous disrespect for the girl. See how it looks in print -- I translate this from a conversation in one of the best of the German Sunday-school books:

Gretchen: "Wilhelm, where is the turnip?"

Wilhelm: "She has gone to the kitchen."

Gretchen: "Where is the accomplished and beautiful English maiden?"

Wilhelm. "It has gone to the opera.”
― Mark Twain, A Tramp Abroad

“Everybody has heard of the great Heidelberg Tun, and most people have seen it, no doubt. It is a wine-cask as big as a cottage, and some traditions say it holds eighteen hundred thousand bottles, and other traditions say it holds eighteen hundred million barrels. I think it likely that one of these statements is a mistake, and the other is a lie. However, the mere matter of capacity is a thing of no sort of consequence, since the cask is empty, and indeed has always been empty, history says. An empty cask the size of a cathedral could excite but little emotion in me. I do not see any wisdom in building a monster cask to hoard up emptiness in, when you can get a better quality, outside, any day, free of expense.”
― Mark Twain, A Tramp Abroad

“A man who keeps company with glaciers comes to feel tolerably insignificant by and by.”
― Mark Twain, A Tramp Abroad

“The Germans have another kind of parenthesis, which they make by splitting a verb in two and putting half of it at the beginning of an exciting chapter and the other half at the end of it. Can any one conceive of anything more confusing than that? These things are called “separable verbs.” The German grammar is blistered all over with separable verbs; and the wider the two portions of one of them are spread apart, the better the author of the crime is pleased with his performance. A favorite one is reiste ab—which means departed. Here is an example which I culled from a novel and reduced to English: “The trunks being now ready, he de- after kissing his mother and sisters, and once more pressing to his bosom his adored Gretchen, who, dressed in simple white muslin, with a single tuberose in the ample folds of her rich brown hair, had tottered feebly down the stairs, still pale from the terror and excitement of the past evening, but longing to lay her poor aching head yet once again upon the breast of him whom she loved more dearly than life itself, parted.” However, it is not well to dwell too much on the separable verbs. One is sure to lose his temper early; and if he sticks to the subject, and will not be warned, it will at last either soften his brain or petrify it. Personal pronouns and adjectives are a fruitful nuisance in this language, and should have been left out. For instance, the same sound, sie, means you, and it means she, and it means her, and it means it, and it means they, and it means them. Think of the ragged poverty of a language which has to make one word do the work of six—and a poor little weak thing of only three letters at that. But mainly, think of the exasperation of never knowing which of these meanings the speaker is trying to convey. This explains why, whenever a person says sie to me, I generally try to kill him, if a stranger.”
― Mark Twain, A Tramp Abroad

“The Germans are exceedingly fond of Rhine wines; they are put up in tall, slender bottles, and are considered a pleasant beverage. One tells them from vinegar by the label.”
― Mark Twain, A Tramp Abroad

“His hair was short and parted accurately in the middle, and he had all the look of an American person who would be likely to begin his signature with an initial, and spell his middle name out.”
― Mark Twain, A Tramp Abroad

“I have a prejudice against people who print things in a foreign language and add no translation. When I am the reader, and the author considers me able to do the translating myself, he pays me quite a nice compliment - but if he would do the translating for me I would try to get along without the compliment.”
― Mark Twain, A Tramp Abroad

“It's a Catholic glacier. You can tell by the look of it. And the management." I said, no, I believed nothing but the extreme end of it was in a Catholic canton. "Well, then, it's a government glacier," said Harris. "It's all the same. Over here the government runs everything—so everything's slow; slow, and ill-managed. But with us, everything's done by private enterprise—and then there ain't much lolling around, you can depend on it. I wish Tom Scott could get his hands on this torpid old slab once—you'd see it take a different gait from this." I said I was sure he would increase the speed, if there was trade enough to justify it.”
― Mark Twain, A Tramp Abroad

“Germany, in the summer, is the perfection of the beautiful, but nobody has understood, and realized, and enjoyed the utmost possibilities of this soft and peaceful beauty unless he has voyaged down the Neckar on a raft. The motion of a raft is the needful motion; it is gentle, and gliding, and smooth, and noiseless; it calms down all feverish activities, it soothes to sleep all nervous hurry and impatience; under its restful influence all the troubles and vexations and sorrows that harass the mind vanish away, and existence becomes a dream, a charm, a deep and tranquil ecstasy. How it contrasts with hot and perspiring pedestrianism, and dusty and deafening railroad rush, and tedious jolting behind tired horses over blinding white roads!”
― Mark Twain, A Tramp Abroad

“The English youth's face simply showed a lively surprise, but nothing more. He went swinging along valleyward again, as if he did not know he had just swindled a coroner”
― Mark Twain, A Tramp Abroad

“A great and priceless thing is a new interest! How it takes possession of a man! how it clings to him, how it rides him!”
― Mark Twain, A Tramp Abroad

“Fifthly, I would do away with those great long compounded words; or require the speaker to deliver them in sections, with intermissions for refreshments. To wholly do away with them would be best, for ideas are more easily received and digested when they come one at a time than when they come in bulk. Intellectual food is like any other; it is pleasanter and more beneficial to take it with a spoon than with a shovel.”
― Mark Twain, A Tramp Abroad

“And if I have not also shown that German is a harassing and infuriating study, my execution has been at fault, and not my intent. I heard lately of a worn and sorely tried American student who used to fly to a certain German word for relief when he could bear up under his aggravations no longer—the only word whose sound was sweet and precious to his ear and healing to his lacerated spirit. This was the word damit. It was only the sound that helped him, not the meaning; [3] and so, at last, when he learned that the emphasis was not on the first syllable, his only stay and support was gone, and he faded away and died.”
― Mark Twain, A Tramp Abroad

“In German, a young lady has no sex, while a turnip has. Think what overwrought reverence that shows for the turnip, and what callous disrespect for the girl. See how it looks in print—I translate this from a conversation in one of the best of the German Sunday-school books: “Gretchen. Wilhelm, where is the turnip? “Wilhelm. She has gone to the kitchen. “Gretchen. Where is the accomplished and beautiful English maiden? “Wilhelm. It has gone to the opera.”
― Mark Twain, A Tramp Abroad

“An honest man in politics shines more there than he would elsewhere.
- A Tramp Abroad”
― Mark Twain, A Tramp Abroad

“On one of these occasions, "suddenly there hovered around the top of the rock a brightness of unequaled clearness and color, which, in increasingly smaller circles thickened, was the enchanting figure of the beautiful Lore.”
― Mark Twain, A Tramp Abroad

“seemed like a vast warty bug taking a meditative walk.”
― Mark Twain, A Tramp Abroad

“One finds out a great many wonderful things, by traveling, if he stumbles upon the right person.”
― Mark Twain, A Tramp Abroad

“me that it had been many years since the world had been afforded the spectacle of a man adventurous enough to undertake”
― Mark Twain, A Tramp Abroad

“I must venture to claim one little matter of superiority in our manners; a lady may traverse our streets all day, going and coming as she chooses, and she will never be molested by any man; but if a lady, unattended, walks abroad in the streets of London, even at noonday, she will be pretty likely to be accosted and insulted—”
― Mark Twain, A Tramp Abroad