Great Throughts Treasury

"Irreverence is the champion of liberty and its one sure defense."

"Is not this insanity plea becoming rather common? Is it not so common that the reader confidently expects to see it offered in every criminal case that comes before the courts?... Really, what we want now, is not laws against crime, but a law against insanity."

"Is the Archbishop's blessing any more meaningful than the Politician's handshake? They come, they go, with bigger things than us on their minds."

"It [the press] has scoffed at religion till it has made scoffing popular. It has defended official criminals, on party pretexts, until it has created a United States Senate whose members are incapable of determining what crime against law and the dignity of their own body is?they are so morally blind?and it has made light of dishonesty till we have as a result a Congress which contracts to work for a certain sum and then deliberately steals additional wages out of the public pocket and is pained and surprised that anybody should worry about a little thing like that."

"It ain't no use to try to learn you nothing, Huck."

"It ain't those parts of the Bible that I can't understand that bother me, it is the parts that I do understand."

"It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so."

"It didn't take me long to make up my mind that these liars warn't no kings nor dukes at all, but just low-down humbugs and frauds. But I never said nothing, never let on; kept it to myself; it's the best way; then you don't have no quarrels, and don't get into no trouble. If they wanted us to call them kings and dukes, I hadn't no objections, 'long as it would keep peace in the family; and it warn't no use to tell Jim, so I didn't tell him. If I never learnt nothing else out of pap, I learnt that the best way to get along with his kind of people is to let them have their own way."

"It does look as if Massachusetts were in a fair way to embarrass me with kindnesses this year. In the first place, a Massachusetts judge has just decided in open court that a Boston publisher may sell, not only his own property in a free and unfettered way, but also may as freely sell property which does not belong to him but to me; property which he has not bought and which I have not sold. Under this ruling I am now advertising that judge's homestead for sale, and, if I make as good a sum out of it as I expect, I shall go on and sell out the rest of his property."

"it don?t make no difference whether you do right or wrong, a person?s conscience ain?t got no sense, and just goes for him anyway. If I had a yaller dog that didn?t know no more than a person?s conscience does I would pisson him. It takes up more room than all the rest of a person?s insides, and yet ain?t no good, nohow."

"It has always been my rule never to smoke when asleep, and never to refrain when awake."

"It has been said that a Scotchman has not seen the world until he has seen Edinburgh; and I think that I may say that an American has not seen the United States until he as seen Mardi-Gras in New Orleans."

"It is a good and gentle religion, but inconvenient."

"It is a good idea to obey all the rules when you're young just so you'll have the strength to break them when you're old."

"It is a hole in the wall, said the cat. You look in it, and there you see the picture, and it is so dainty and charming and ethereal and inspiring in its unimaginable beauty that your head turns round and round, and you almost swoon with ecstasy."

"It is a mistake that there is no bath that will cure people's manners, but drowning would help."

"It is a mystery that is hidden from me by reason that the emergency requiring the fathoming of it hath not in my life-days occurred, and so, not having no need to know this thing, I abide barren of the knowledge."

"It is a pity we can't escape from life when we are young."

"It is a time when one?s spirit is subdued and sad, one knows not why; when the past seems a storm-swept desolation, life a vanity and a burden, and the future but a way to death. It is a time when one is filled with vague longings; when one dreams of flight to peaceful islands in the remote solitudes of the sea, or folds his hands and says, What is the use of struggling, and toiling and worrying any more? let us give it all up."

"It is a wise child that knows its own father, and an unusual one that unreservedly approves of him."

"It is at our mother's knee that we acquire our noblest and truest and highest ideals, but there is seldom any money in them."

"It is best to read the weather forecast before praying for rain."

"It is better to be a young June-bug than an old bird of paradise."

"It is better to be alone than unwelcome."

"It is better to give than receive- especially advice."

"It is better to have old second-hand diamonds than none at all."

"It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt."

"It is better to take what does not belong to you than to let it lie around neglected."

"It is by the fortune of God that, in this country, we have three benefits: freedom of speech, freedom of thought, and the wisdom never to use either."

"It is curious - curious that physical courage should be so common in the world, and moral courage so rare."

"It is discouraging to try to penetrate a mind like yours. You ought to get it out and dance on it. That would take some of the rigidity out of it."

"It is easier to manufacture seven facts out of whole cloth than one emotion."

"It is easier to stay out than get out."

"It is easy to find fault, if one has that disposition. There was once a man who, not being able to find any other fault with his coal, complained that there were too many prehistoric toads in it."

"It is full of interest. It has noble poetry in it; and some clever fables; and some blood-drenched history; and some good morals; and a wealth of obscenity; and upwards of a thousand lies."

"It is hard to make railroading pleasant in any country. It is too tedious."

"It is higher and nobler to be kind."

"It is hopeless for the occasional visitor to try to keep up with Chicago-she outgrows his prophecies faster than he can make them. She is always a novelty; for she is never the Chicago you saw when you passed through the last time."

"It is just like man's vanity and impertinence to call an animal dumb because it is dumb to his dull perceptions. Heaven is by favor; if it were by merit your dog would go in and you would stay out. Of all the creatures ever made he (man) is the most detestable. Of the entire brood, he is the only one...that possesses malice. He is the only creature that inflicts pain for sport, knowing it to be pain. The fact that man knows right from wrong proves his intellectual superiority to the other creatures; but the fact that he can do wrong proves his moral inferiority to any creature that cannot."

"It is my belief that nearly any invented quotation, played with confidence, stands a good chance to deceive."

"It is my custom to keep on talking until I get the audience cowed."

"It is my heart-warmed and world-embracing Christmas hope and aspiration that all of us, the high, the low, the rich, the poor, the admired, the despised, the loved, the hated, the civilized, the savage (every man and brother of us all throughout the whole earth), may eventually be gathered together in a heaven of everlasting rest and peace and bliss, except the inventor of the telephone."

"It is my prayer, it is my longing, that we may pass from this life together?a longing which shall never perish from the earth, but shall have place in the heart of every wife that loves, until the end of time; and it shall be called by my name. But if one of us must go first, it is my prayer that it shall be I; for he is strong, I am weak, I am not so necessary to him as he is to me?life without him would not be life; how could I endure it? This prayer is also immortal, and will not cease from being offered up while my race continues. I am the first wife; and in the last wife I shall be repeated. After Huck writes a letter confessing his sin, intending to hand-in Jim with it; All right, then, I'll GO to hell -- and tore it up. I believe our Heavenly Father invented man because he was disappointed in the monkey. I believe that whenever a human being, of even the highest intelligence and culture, delivers an opinion upon a matter apart from his particular and especial line of interest, training and experience, it will always be an opinion of so foolish and so valueless a sort that it can be depended upon to suggest our Heavenly Father that the human being is another disappointment and that he is no considerable improvement upon the monkey. Dance like no one's watching, live every day like it's your last and love like you've never been hurt."

"It is no harm to be an ass, if one is content to bray and not kick."

"It is noble to teach oneself, but still nobler to teach others - and less trouble."

"It is not best that we should all think alike; it is a difference of opinion that makes horse races."

"It is not what a man knows, but what he thinks of in time."

"It is not wise to keep the fire going under a slander unless you can get some large advantage out of keeping it alive. Few slanders can stand the wear of silence."

"It is said, in this country, that if a man can arrange his religion so that it perfectly satisfies his conscience, it is not incumbent upon him to care whether the arrangement is satisfactory to anyone else or not."

"It is sound judgment to put on a bold face and play your hand for a hundred times what it is worth; forty-nine times out of fifty nobody dares to call it, and you roll in the chips."