When the peremptory challenges wereall exhausted, a jury of twelve men wereimpaneled—a jury who swore that they hadneither heard, read, talked about, nor expressedan opinion concerning a murder which thevery cattle in the corrals, the Indians in thesage-brush, and the stones in the street werecognizant of!

To do something, say something, seesomething, before anybody else—these are things that confer a pleasure compared with which other pleasures are tame and commonplace, other ecstasies cheap and trivial.

[ Deleted dedication of Twain’s book RoughingIt:] To the Late Cain, This Book is Dedicated, Not on account of respect for his memory, for it merits little respect; not on accountof sympathy with him, for his bloody deedplaced him without the pale of sympathy, strictly speaking; but out of a mere humancommiseration for him in that it was hismisfortune to live in a dark age that knew notthe beneficent Insanity Plea.

The serene confidence which a Christian feels in four aces.

If I were settled I would quit all nonsense & swindle some girl into marrying me. But Iwouldn’t expect to be “worthy” of her. I wouldn’t have a girl that I was worthy of. She wouldn’t do. She wouldn’t be respectable enough.

I have often noticed that you shun exertion.There comes the difference between us. I courtexertion. I love work. Why, sir, when I have apiece of work to perform, I go away to myself, sit down in the shade, and muse over thecoming enjoyment.

The timid man yearns for full value and demands a tenth. The bold man strikes for double value and compromises on par.

Often, the surest way to convey misinformation is to tell the strict truth.

To go abroad has something of the same sense that death brings. I am no longer of ye—what ye say of me is now of no consequence.

To forget pain is to be painless; to forget care is to be rid of it; to go abroad is to accomplish both.