Mark Twain Trail

“Once I talked to the inmates of an insane asylum in Hartford.  I have talked to idiots a thousand times, but only once to the insane…”  Mark Twain

“Every time you stop a school, you will have to build a jail. What you gain at one end you lose at the other. It’s like feeding a dog on his own tail. It won’t fatten the dog.”  Mark Twain

“We chase phantoms half the days of our lives. It is well if we learn wisdom even then, and save the other half.”  Mark Twain, Letter to Orion Clemens, February 1868

“There was never yet an uninteresting life.  Such a thing is an impossibility.  Inside of the dullest exterior there is a drama, a comedy, and a tragedy.”  Mark Twain, The Refuge of the Derelicts, 1905

“We recognize that there are no trivial occurrences in life if we get the right focus on them.”  Mark Twain

“A powerful agent is the right word. Whenever we come upon one of those intensely right words in a book or a newspaper the resulting effect is physical as well as spiritual, and electrically prompt: it tingles exquisitely around through the walls of the mouth and tastes as tart and crisp and good as the autumn-butter that creams the sumac-berry.”  Mark Twain

“It is good to obey all the rules when you’re young, so you’ll have the strength to break them when you’re old.”  Mark Twain