Mark Twain Quotes About House

• I shall never use profanity except in discussing house rent and taxes.

  Mark Twain

  House, Taxes, Profanity

  Mark Twain, Milton Meltzer (2002). “Mark Twain Himself: A Pictorial Biography”, p.127, University of Missouri Press

• I felt it was my duty to praise all of God's works with fervent enthusiasm. At the same time I killed flies in my house in a spirit of hatred, exasperation and contempt. My praise to God for all his works was dishonest, the act of killing the fly was honest.

  Mark Twain

  Hatred, House, Enthusiasm

• There ought to be a room in every house to swear in. It's dangerous to have to repress an emotion like that.

  Mark Twain

  Funny, Humorous, House

  Mark Twain (2012). “Mark Twain at Your Fingertips: A Book of Quotations”, p.380, Courier Corporation

• Protestant parents still keep a Bible handy in the house, so that the children can study it, and one of the first things the little boys and girls learn is to be righteous and holy and not piss against the wall. They study those passages more than they study any others, except those which incite to masturbation. Those they hunt out and study in private.

  Mark Twain

  Bible, Girl, Children

  Mark Twain (1995). “The Bible According to Mark Twain: Writings on Heaven, Eden, and the Flood”, p.256, University of Georgia Press

• To us, our house was not unsentient matter -- it had a heart, and a soul, and eyes to see us with; and approvals and solicitudes and deep sympathies; it was of us, and we were in its confidence, and lived in its grace and in the peace of its benediction.

  Mark Twain

  Heart, Eye, House

  Mark Twain (2004). “The Letters of Mark Twain”, p.251, 1st World Publishing

• [I] shall never use profanity except in discussing house rent and taxes. Indeed, upon second thought, I will not use it then, for it is unchristian, inelegant, and degrading--though to speak truly I do not see how house rent and taxes are going to be discussed worth a cent without it.

  Mark Twain

  House, Speak, Unchristian

  Mark Twain (1992). “Mark Twain's Letters, Volume 3: 1869”, p.471, Univ of California Press

• A man's house burns down. The smoking wreckage represents only a ruined home that was dear through years of use and pleasant associations. By and by, as the days and weeks go on, first he misses this, then that, then the other thing. And when he casts about for it he finds that it was in that house. Always it is an essential - here was but one of its kind. It cannot be replaced. It was in that house. It is irrevocably lost...It will be years before the tale of lost essentials is complete, and not till then can he truly know the magnitude of his disaster.

  Mark Twain

  Love, Goodbye, Home

  Mark Twain (2010). “Mark Twain's Own Autobiography: The Chapters from the North American Review”, p.26, Univ of Wisconsin Press

• The house was as empty as a beer closet in premises where painters have been at work.

  Mark Twain

  Humorous, Beer, House

  Mark Twain (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Mark Twain (Illustrated)”, p.3472, Delphi Classics

• One may make their house a palace of sham, or they can make it a home, a refuge.

  Mark Twain

  Home, House, May

• When someone dies, it is like when your house burns down; it isn't for years that you realize the full extent of your loss.

  Mark Twain

  Grief, Loss, Years

• By reading keep in a state of excited igorance, like a blind man in a house afire; flounder around, immensely but unintelligently interested; don't know how I got in and can't find the way out, but I'm having a booming time all to myself.Don't know what a Schelgesetzentwurf is, but I keep as excited over it and as worried about it as if it were my own child. I simply live on the Sch.; it is my daily bread. I wouldn't have the question settled for anything in the world.

  Mark Twain

  Children, Reading, Men

• It has been reported that I was seriously ill--it was another man; dying--it was another man; dead--the other man again...As far as I can see, nothing remains to be reported, except that I have become a foreigner. When you hear it, don't you believe it. And don't take the trouble to deny it. Merely just raise the American flag on our house in Hartford and let it talk.

  Mark Twain

  Death, Believe, Men

• Written things are not for speech; their form is literary; they are stiff, inflexible, and will not lend themselves to happy and effective delivery with the tongue-where their purpose is to merely entertain, not instruct; they have to be limbered up, broken up, colloquialized and turned into common forms of premeditated talk-otherwise they will bore the house and not entertain it.

  Mark Twain

  Broken, House, Purpose

  Mark Twain (2015). “Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 3: The Complete and Authoritative Edition”, p.166, Univ of California Press

• I am technically "boss" of the family which I am carrying along-but I am grateful to know that it is only technically - that the real authority rests on the other side of the house. It is placed there by a beneficent Providence, who foresaw before I was born, or, if he did not, he has found it out since - that I am not in any way qualified to travel alone.

  Mark Twain

  Travel, Real, Grateful

  Mark Twain (2006). “Mark Twain Speaking”, p.300, University of Iowa Press

• A brown spotted lady-bug climbed the dizzy height of a grass blade, and Tom bent down close to it and said, "Lady-bug, lady-bug, fly away home, your house is on fire, your children's alone," and she took wing and went off to see about it -- which did not surprise the boy, for he knew of old that this insect was credulous about conflagrations, and he had practised upon its simplicity more than once.

  Mark Twain

  Children, Home, Boys

  Mark Twain (2012). “Adventures of Tom Sawyer Companion”, p.124, BookCaps Study Guides

• There's nobody for me to attack in this matter even with soft and gentle ridicule-and I shouldn't ever think of using a grown up weapon in this kind of a nursery. Above all, I couldn't venture to attack the clergymen whom you mention, for I have their habits and live in the same glass house which they are occupying. I am always reading immoral books on the sly, and then selfishly trying to prevent other people from having the same wicked good time.

  Mark Twain

  Book, Reading, Thinking

• There is nothing in either savage or civilized history that is more utterly complete, more remorselessly sweeping than the Father of Mercy´s campaign among the Midianites. The official report deals only in masses, all the virgins, all the men, all the babies. all ´creatures that breathe,´ all houses. all cities. It gives you just one vast picture ...as far as the eye can reach, of charred ruins and storm-swept desolation... Would you expect this same conscienceless God, this moral bankrupt, to become a teacher of morals, of gentleness, of meekness, of righteousness, of purity?

  Mark Twain

  Teacher, Baby, Father

• No one can tell me what is a good cigar - for me. I am the only judge. People who claim to know say that I smoke the worst cigars in the world. They bring their own cigars when they come to my house.

  Mark Twain

  Judging, People, House

  Mark Twain (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Mark Twain (Illustrated)”, p.4052, Delphi Classics

• Our best built certainties are but sand-houses and subject to damage from any wind of doubt that blows

  Mark Twain

  Blow, Wind, House

  Mark Twain, John Sutton Tuckey (1980). “The Devil's Race-track: Mark Twain's Great Dark Writings : the Best from Which was the Dream? and Fables of Man”, p.103, Univ of California Press

• The idea that a baby doesn't amount to anything! Why, one baby is just a house and a front yard full by itself. One baby can, furnish more business than you and your whole Interior Department can attend to. He is enterprising, irrepressible, brimful of lawless activities.

  Mark Twain

  Baby, Ideas, House

  Mark Twain, General Press (2016). “The Complete Works of Mark Twain: All 13 Novels, Short Stories, Poetry and Essays”, p.2171, GENERAL PRESS

• Where was the use, originally, in rushing this whole globe through in six days? It is likely that if more time had been taken in the first place, the world would have been made right, and this ceaseless improving and repairing would not be necessary now. But if you hurry a world or a house, you are nearly sure to find out by and by that you have left out a towhead, or a broom-closet, or some other little convenience, here and there, which has got to be supplied, no matter how much expense or vexation it may cost.

  Mark Twain

  Taken, Rushing, House

  Mark Twain (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Mark Twain (Illustrated)”, p.6231, Delphi Classics

• The partitions of the houses were so thin we could hear the women occupants of adjoining rooms changing their minds.

  Mark Twain

  House, Mind, Rooms

  Mark Twain (2012). “Mark Twain at Your Fingertips: A Book of Quotations”, p.500, Courier Corporation

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