Mark Twain: Frasi in inglese (pagina 18)

“He had discovered a great law of human action, without knowing it — namely, that in order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to obtain.”

“A person with a new idea is a crank until the idea succeeds.”

“Huck was always willing to take a hand in any enterprise that offered entertainment and required no capital, for he had a troublesome super-abundance of that sort of time which ismoney.”

“I have been complimented many times and they always embarrass me; I always feel that they have not said enough.”

“To be, or not to be; that is the bare bodkin.”

“Don't go around thinking the world owes you a living. It was here first.”

“In a museum in Havana, there are two skulls of Christopher Columbus, one when he was a boy and one when he was a man”

“If you don't like the weather in New England now, just wait a few minutes.”

“Only one thing is impossible for God: To find any sense in any copyright law on the planet.”

“One must travel, to learn. Every day, now, old Scriptural phrases that never possessed any significance for me before, take to themselves a meaning.”

“What's your name?"
"Becky Thatcher. What's yours? Oh, I know. It's Thomas Sawyer."
"That's the name they lick me by. I'm Tom when I'm good. You call me Tom, will you?"
"Yes”

“To place man properly at the present time, he stands somewhere between the angels and the French.”

“I have been studying the traits and dispositions of the "lower animals" (so called) and contrasting them with the traits and dispositions of man. I find the result humiliating to me.”

“Now he found out a new thing--namely, that to promise not to do a thing is the surest way in the world to make a body want to go and do that very thing.”

“Let us make a special effort to stop communicating with each other, so we can have some conversation.”

“We have a criminal jury system which is superior to any in the world and it's efficiency is only marred by the difficulty of finding twelve men every day who don't know anything and can't read”

“New Year’s Day: Now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions. Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual.”

“It's not as bad as it sounds.”

“Learning softeneth the heart and breedeth gentleness and charity.”