Letters from the Earth Quotes

“Man is the Reasoning Animal. Such is the claim. I think it is open to dispute. Indeed, my experiments have proven to me that he is the Unreasoning Animal... In truth, man is incurably foolish. Simple things which other animals easily learn, he is incapable of learning. Among my experiments was this. In an hour I taught a cat and a dog to be friends. I put them in a cage. In another hour I taught them to be friends with a rabbit. In the course of two days I was able to add a fox, a goose, a squirrel and some doves. Finally a monkey. They lived together in peace; even affectionately.

Next, in another cage I confined an Irish Catholic from Tipperary, and as soon as he seemed tame I added a Scotch Presbyterian from Aberdeen. Next a Turk from Constantinople; a Greek Christian from Crete; an Armenian; a Methodist from the wilds of Arkansas; a Buddhist from China; a Brahman from Benares. Finally, a Salvation Army Colonel from Wapping. Then I stayed away for two whole days. When I came back to note results, the cage of Higher Animals was all right, but in the other there was but a chaos of gory odds and ends of turbans and fezzes and plaids and bones and flesh--not a specimen left alive. These Reasoning Animals had disagreed on a theological detail and carried the matter to a Higher Court.”
― Mark Twain, Letters from the Earth: Uncensored Writings

“The difference between a Miracle and a Fact is exactly the difference between a mermaid and a seal.”
― Mark Twain, Letters from the Earth: Uncensored Writings

“Only one thing is impossible for God: To find any sense in any copyright law on the planet.”
― Mark Twain, Letters from the Earth: Uncensored Writings

“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.”
― Mark Twain, Letters from the Earth: Uncensored Writings

“Now what I contend is that my body is my own, at least I have always so regarded it. If I do harm through my experimenting with it, it is I who suffer, not the state.”
― Mark Twain, Letters from the Earth: Uncensored Writings

“You have heretofore found out, by my teachings, that man is a fool; you are now aware that woman is a damned fool.”
― Mark Twain, Letters From The Earth: Uncensored Writings By Mark Twain

“Man is a marvelous curiosity. When he is at his very very best he is a sort of low grade nickel-plated angel; at is worst he is unspeakable, unimaginable; and first and last and all the time he is a sarcasm. Yet he blandly and in all sincerity calls himself the "noblest work of God.”
― Mark Twain, Letters from the Earth: Uncensored Writings

“Solomon, who was one of the Deity's favorites, had a copulation cabinet composed of seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines. To save his life he could not have kept two of these young creatures satisfactorily refreshed, even if he had fifteen experts to help him. Necessarily almost the entire thousand had to go hungry for years and years on a stretch. Conceive of a man hardhearted enough to look daily upon all that suffering and not be moved to mitigate it.”
― Mark Twain, Letters from the Earth: Uncensored Writings

“Thou shalt not commit adultry is a command which makes no distinction between the following persons. They are all required to obey it: children at birth. Children in the cradle. School children. Youths and maidens. Fresh adults. Older ones. Men and women of 40. Of 50. Of 60. Of 70. Of 80. Of 100. The command does not distribute its burden equally, and cannot. It is not hard upon the three sets of children.”
― Mark Twain, Letters From The Earth: Uncensored Writings By Mark Twain

“Now there you have a sample of man’s “reasoning powers,” as he calls them. He observes certain facts. For instance, that in all his life he never sees the day that he can satisfy one woman; also, that no woman ever sees the day that she can’t overwork, and defeat, and put out of commission any ten masculine plants that can be put to bed to her. He puts those strikingly suggestive and luminous facts together, and from them draws this astonishing conclusion: The Creator intended the woman to be restricted to one man.”
― Mark Twain, Letters from the Earth: Uncensored Writings

“Now then, in the earth these people cannot stand much church -- an hour and a quarter is the limit, and they draw the line at once a week. That is to say, Sunday. One day in seven; and even then they do not look forward to it with longing. And so -- consider what their heaven provides for them: "church" that lasts forever, and a Sabbath that has no end! They quickly weary of this brief hebdomadal Sabbath here, yet they long for that eternal one; they dream of it, they talk about it, they think they think they are going to enjoy it -- with all their simple hearts they think they think they are going to be happy in it!”
― Mark Twain, Letters from the Earth: Uncensored Writings

“I've just come to my room, Livy darling, I guess this was the memorable night of my life. By George, I never was so stirred since I was born. I heard four speeches which I can never forget... one by that splendid old soul, Col. Bob Ingersoll, — oh, it was just the supremest combination of English words that was ever put together since the world began... How handsome he looked, as he stood on that table, in the midst of those 500 shouting men, and poured the molten silver from his lips! What an organ is human speech when it is played by a master! How pale those speeches are in print, but how radiant, how full of color, how blinding they were in the delivery! It was a great night, a memorable night.

I doubt if America has seen anything quite equal to it. I am well satisfied I shall not live to see its equal again... Bob Ingersoll’s music will sing through my memory always as the divinest that ever enchanted my ears. And I shall always see him, as he stood that night on a dinner-table, under the flash of lights and banners, in the midst of seven hundred frantic shouters, the most beautiful human creature that ever lived... You should have seen that vast house rise to its feet; you should have heard the hurricane that followed. That's the only test! People might shout, clap their hands, stamp, wave their napkins, but none but the master can make them get up on their feet.

{Twain's letter to his wife, Livy, about friend Robert Ingersoll's incredible speech at 'The Grand Banquet', considered to be one of the greatest oratory performances of all time}”
― Mark Twain, Letters from the Earth: Uncensored Writings

“Life was not a valuable gift, but death was. Life was a fever-dream made up of joys embittered by sorrows, pleasure poisoned by pain; a dream that was a nightmare-confusion of spasmodic and fleeting delights, ecstasies, exultations, happinesses, interspersed with long-drawn miseries, griefs, perils, horrors, disappointments, defeats,humiliations, and despairs--the heaviest curse devisable by divine ingenuity; but death was sweet, death was gentle, death was kind; death healed the bruised spirit and the broken heart, and gave them rest and forgetfulness; death was man's best friend; when man could endure life no longer, death came and set him free.”
― Mark Twain, Letters from the Earth: Uncensored Writings

“After a long time and many questions, Satan said, "The spider kills the fly, and eats it; the bird kills the spider and eats it; the wildcat kills the goose; the -- well, they all kill each other. It is murder all along the line. Here are countless multitudes of creatures, and they all kill, kill, kill, they are all murderers. And they are not to blame, Divine One?”
― Mark Twain, Letters from the Earth: Uncensored Writings

“The Jabalites .... They worship no god; and if we in goodness of heart do send a missionary to show them the way of life, they listen with respect to all he hath to say, and then they eat him. This doth tend to hinder the spread of light.”
― Mark Twain, Letters from the Earth: Uncensored Writings

“Expression, expression is the thing - in art. I do not care what it expresses, and I cannot most always sometimes tell, generally, but expression is what I worship, it is what I glory in, with all my impetuous nature.”
― Mark Twain, Letters from the Earth: Uncensored Writings

“More men go to church than want to.”
― Mark Twain, Letters from the Earth: Uncensored Writings

“Satan had been making admiring remarks about certain of the Creator's sparkling industries -- remarks which, being read between the lines, were sarcasms.”
― Mark Twain, Letters from the Earth: Uncensored Writings

“For instance, take this sample: he has imagined a heaven, and has left entirely out of it the supremest of all his delights, the one ecstasy that stands first and foremost in the heart of every individual of his race -- and of ours -- sexual intercourse!

It is as if a lost and perishing person in a roasting desert should be told by a rescuer he might choose and have all longed-for things but one, and he should elect to leave out water!”
― Mark Twain, Letters from the Earth: Uncensored Writings

“SATAN'S LETTER

This is a strange place, and extraordinary place, and interesting. There is nothing resembling it at home. The people are all insane, the other animals are all insane, the earth is insane, Nature itself is insane.”
― Mark Twain, Letters from the Earth: Uncensored Writings

“The first time the Deity came down to earth, he brought life and death; when he came the second time, he brought hell.”
― Mark Twain, Letters from the Earth: Uncensored Writings

“It is full of interest, it has noble poetry in it and some clever fables and some blood drenched history, some good morals and a wealth of obscenity and upwards of a thousand lies.
(Re The Bible)”
― Mark Twain, Letters from the Earth: Uncensored Writings

“James Elly Kleinman, a cousin of mine was seriously ill two or three weeks ago, in New York, but is well now. The report of my illness grew out of his illness, the report of my death was an exaggeration.”
― Mark Twain, Letters from the Earth: Uncensored Writings

“His heaven is like himself: strange, interesting, astonishing, grotesque. I give you my word, it has not a single feature in it that he actually values. It consists -- utterly and entirely -- of diversions which he cares next to nothing about, here in the earth, yet is quite sure he will like them in heaven. Isn't it curious? Isn't it interesting? You must not think I am exaggerating, for it is not so. I will give you details.”
― Mark Twain, Letters from the Earth: Uncensored Writings

“Your country and mine is an interesting one, but there is nothing there that is half so interesting as the human mind.”
― Mark Twain, Letters from the Earth: Uncensored Writings

“Do not bring your dog. (advice for attending a funeral)”
― Mark Twain, Letters from the Earth: Uncensored Writings

“Then, having thus made the Creator responsible for all those pains and diseases and miseries above enumerated, and which he could have prevented, the gifted Christian blandly calls him Our Father!

It is as I tell you. He equips the Creator with every trait that goes to the making of a fiend, and then arrives at the conclusion that a fiend and a father are the same thing! Yet he would deny that a malevolent lunatic and a Sunday school superintendent are essentially the same.”
― Mark Twain, Letters from the Earth: Uncensored Writings

“In time, the Deity perceived that death was a mistake; a mistake, in that it was insufficient; insufficient, for the reason that while it was an admirable agent for the inflicting of misery upon the survivor, it allowed the dead person himself to escape from all further persecution in the blessed refuge of the grave. This was not satisfactory. A way must be conceived to pursue the dead beyond the tomb.

The Deity pondered this matter during four thousand years unsuccessfully, but as soon as he came down to earth and became a Christian his mind cleared and he knew what to do. He invented hell, and proclaimed it.”
― Mark Twain, Letters from the Earth: Uncensored Writings

“The Church still prizes the Moral Sense as man's noblest asset today, although the Church knows God had a distinctly poor opinion of it and did what he could in his clumsy way to keep his happy Children of the Garden from acquiring it.”
― Mark Twain, Letters from the Earth: Uncensored Writings

“Presently a serpent sought them out privately, and came to them walking upright, which was the way of serpents in those days. The serpent said the forbidden fruit would store their vacant minds with knowledge. So they ate it, which was quite natural, for man is so made that he eagerly wants to know; whereas the priest, like God, whose imitator and representative he is, has made it his business from the beginning to keep him from knowing any useful thing.”
― Mark Twain, Letters from the Earth: Uncensored Writings