More Mark Twain Quotes from the Quotable Mark Twain

One of my favorite Kindle Books so far; Mark Twain was a writer/humorist of
the nth degree +++ in my view.
1865 A sincere compliment is always grateful to a lady, so long as you don't try to knock her down with it.

(it) is necessary, to keep up one's self-respect.... When you cannot get a compliment in any other way, pay yourself one.
1868 ( re: Olivia Langdon Clemens--Mark Twain's wife) "That girl is one in a million. She is fearfully & wonderfully made."

1869 (re:  Jane Lampton Clemens --Mark Twain's mother)  "My most patient reader and most charitable critic."

1870  (re wife Olivia "Livy" Langdon; married to her in 2/1870)She is much the most beautiful girl I ever saw (I said that before she was anything to me, & so it is worthy of all belief) & she is the best girl, & the sweetest, & the gentlest, & the daintiest, & the most modest & unpretentious, & the wisest in all things she should be wise in & the most ignorant in all matters it would not grace her to know, & she is sensible & quick, & loving & faithful, forgiving, full of charity-& her beautiful life is ordered by a religion that is all kindliness & unselfishness.... She is the very most perfect gem of womankind that ever I saw in my life-& I will stand by that remark till I die."

1871 (re: Mother Jane Lampton Clemens) "Ma is a wonderfully winning woman, with her gentle simplicity & her never-failing goodness of heart & yearning interest in all creatures & their smallest joys & sorrows. It is why she is such a good letter-writer-this warm personal interest of hers in every thing that others have at heart. Whatever is important to another is important to her."

1884 "A man's first duty is to his own conscience & honor--the party and the country second to that, and never first." (Letter to William D. Howells, September 17, 1884)

1887 (Twain re: himself) Twenty-four years ago, I was strangely handsome. The remains of it are still visible through the rifts of time. I was so handsome that human activities ceased as if spellbound when I came in view, & even inanimate things stopped to look-like locomotives & district messenger boys & so-on

1889 (re: mother--Jane Lampton Clemens)"Technically speaking, she had no career; but she had a character, and it was of a fine and striking and lovable sort.... The greatest difference which I find between her and the rest of the people whom I have known, is this, and it is a remarkable one: those others felt a strong interest in a few things, whereas to the very day of her death she felt a strong interest in the whole world and everything and everybody in it."

1896 (re: daughter Suzy who died in 1896 at age 24)  It kills me to think of the books that Susy would have written, and that I shall never read now. This family has lost its prodigy.... only we have seen the flash and play of that imperial intellect at its best
1902 (re: Livy Clemens, his wife) She has been the best friend I have ever had, and that is saying a good deal.

Clemens, Olivia L., death of (June 5, 1904) 1904 "...She was all our riches..."

1904 "I am a man without a country. Wherever Livy was, that was my country. And now she is gone."
1905 I have made it a rule never to smoke more than one cigar at a time. I have no other restriction as regards smoking.

1907 I am the human race compacted and crammed into a single suit of clothes but quite able to represent its entire massed multitude in all its moods and inspirations.