Some Mark Twain Quotes
Posted by Steve Yeich | Posted in Jokes | Posted on 05-10-2009
Tags: funny Mark Twain quotes, humor quotes from Mark Twain, humorous congressional quotes, Mark Twain, Mark Twain quotes
1
Total abstinence is so excellent a thing that it cannot be carried to too great an extent. In my passion for it I even carry it so far as to totally abstain from total abstinence itself.
- autograph inscription in album to Mrs. Rutherford B. Hayes, reported in The Washington Post, June 11, 1881
When angry count four; when very angry, swear.
- Pudd’nhead Wilson’s Calendar
Concerning the difference between man and the jackass: some observers hold that there isn’t any. But this wrongs the jackass.
- Notebook, 1898
I have been an author for 20 years and an ass for 55.
- fragment of a letter, 1891, to unknown person
Fleas can be taught nearly anything that a Congressman can.
- What Is Man?
Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.
- Mark Twain, a Biography
The lightning there is peculiar; it is so convincing, that when it strikes a thing it doesn’t leave enough of that thing behind for you to tell whether–Well, you’d think it was something valuable, and a Congressman had been there.
- Mark Twain’s Speeches, “The Weather”
It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress.
- Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar
It is the foreign element that commits our crimes. There is no native criminal class except Congress.
- More Maxims of Mark, Johnson, 1927
Whiskey is carried into committee rooms in demijohns and carried out in demagogues.
- Notebook, 1868
…I never can think of Judas Iscariot without losing my temper. To my mind Judas Iscariot was nothing but a low, mean, premature, Congressman.
- “Foster’s Case”, New York Tribune, 3/10/1873



