”Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.” - Mark Twain

Although Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn are two of my favorite books, Mark Twain isn’t one of my favorite authors.  Don’t get me wrong; he is by far one of the greatest American novelists.  However, his work is mostly hit or miss for me.  Tom Sawyer?  Awesome bo-possum.  A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court?  No comment.

However, Mark Twain is by far my favorite source of quotes.  In the lexicon of today, he is the 19th century version of John Stewart; a satirical humorist who won’t hesitate to skewer anyone who deserves it.  So hit the jump for Twainisms to lighten up your day:

• A banker is a fellow who lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining, but wants it back the minute it begins to rain.
• An Englishman is a person who does things because they have been done before. An American is a person who does things because they haven’t been done before.
• Barring that natural expression of villainy which we all have, the man looked honest enough.
• Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint.
• Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.
• Don’t go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.
• Facts are stubborn things, but statistics are more pliable.
• Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please.
• Humor is the great thing, the saving thing. The minute it crops up, all our irritations and resentments slip away and a sunny spirit takes their place.
• I thoroughly disapprove of duels. If a man should challenge me, I would take him kindly and forgivingly by the hand and lead him to a quiet place and kill him.
• In Paris they simply stared when I spoke to them in French; I never did succeed in making those idiots understand their language.
• It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.
• Let us be thankful for the fools. But for them the rest of us could not succeed.
• Never put off until tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow.
• There are people who strictly deprive themselves of each and every eatable, drinkable, and smokable which has in any way acquired a shady reputation. They pay this price for health. And health is all they get for it. How strange it is. It is like paying out your whole fortune for a cow that has gone dry.
• We have a criminal jury system which is superior to any in the world; and its efficiency is only marred by the difficulty of finding twelve men every day who don’t know anything and can’t read.
• The report of my death was an exaggeration.
• A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.

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