Samuel Langhorne Clemens Quotes on Communication
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An experienced, industrious, ambitious, and often quite picturesque liar.
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The difference between the right word and the almost right word is really a large matter - it's the difference between a lightning bug and the lightning.
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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.
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The rule is perfect: in all matters of opinion our adversaries are insane.
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Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.
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A man is never more truthful than when he acknowledges himself a liar.
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They spell it 'Vinci' and pronounce it 'Vinchy'. Foreigners always spell better than they pronounce.
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Guides cannot master the subtleties of the American joke.
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In Paris they just simply opened their eyes and stared when we spoke to them in French! We never did succeed in making those idiots understand their own language.
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The minister gave out his text and droned along monotonously through an argument that was so prosy that many a head by and by began to nod - and yet it was an argument that dealt in limitless fire and brimstone and thinned the predestined elect down to a company so small as to be hardly worth the saving.
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The humorous story is told gravely; the teller does his best to conceal the fact that he even dimly suspects that there is anything funny about it.
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Only laughter can blow [a colossal humbug] to rags and atoms at a blast. Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand.
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Drawing on my fine command of language, I said nothing.
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Humor must not professedly teach, and it must not professedly preach, but it must do both if it would live forever.
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A lie can make it half way around the world before the truth has time to put its boots on. (This has also been attributed to Winston Churchill.)
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'I once sent a telegram to 12 of my friends saying ALL IS DISCOVERED - FLEE AT ONCE. They all left town immediately.
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I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying that I approved of it.
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Kindness is a language which the deaf can hear, and the blind can read.
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Substitute 'damn' every time you're inclined to write 'very'; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.
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There are no dialogues, only intersecting monologues.
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Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.
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It is better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than to open it and remove all doubt.