Some Lovely Quotes from Mark Twain

So... we're getting this one-man show called Mark Twain Tonight, and Hal Holbrook, the actor, has been doing this show for 50 years! Anyway, in the course of trying to come up with promotions, I found these gems...


Statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception.
- "Chronicle of Young Satan"

Everyone is a moon, and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody.
- Following the Equator

Each man is afraid of his neighbor's disapproval--a thing which, to the general run of the human race, is more dreaded than wolves and death.
- "The United States of Lyncherdom"

We grant God the possession of all the qualities of mind except the one that keeps the others healthy; that watches over their dignity; that focuses their vision true--humor.
- Notebook, 1902

And my favorite:

But who prays for Satan? Who in eighteen centuries, has had the common humanity to pray for the one sinner that needed it most, our one fellow and brother who most needed a friend yet had not a single one, the one sinner among us all who had the highest and clearest right to every Christian's daily and nightly prayers, for the plain and unassailable reason that his was the first and greatest need, he being among sinners the supremest?
- Mark Twain's Autobiography