Mark Twain's Autobigraphy

The North thinks it knows how to make cornbread, but this is mere superstition. Perhaps no bread in the world is quite so good as Southern corn bread, and perhaps no bread in the world is quite so bad as the Northern imitation of it. The North seldom tries to fry chicken, and this is well; the art cannot be learned north of the line of Mason and Dixon, nor anywhere in Europe.

It seems a pity that the world should throw away so many good things merely because they are unwholesome. I doubt if God has given us any refreshment which, taken in moderation, is unwholesome, except microbes.

...and it had swimming pools too, which were forbidden to us and therefore much frequented by us. For we were little Christian children and had early been taught the value of forbidden fruit.

There were no dentists. When teeth became touched with decay or were otherwise ailing, the doctor knew but one thing to do--he fetched his tongs and dragged them out. If the jaw remained, it was not his fault. Doctors were not called in cases of ordinary illness; the family grandmother attended to those.

Dr. Meredith removed to Hannibal, by and by, and was our family physician there, and saved my life several times. Still, he was a good man and meant well.

I suppose we all have our foibles. I like the exact word, and clarity of statement, and here in there a touch a good grammar for picturesqueness.

I am as fond of complements as another, and as hard to satisfy as the average; but these satisfied me. I was pleased as you would have been if they had been paid to you.

...some fire-auction carpets which blaspheme the standards of color and art all day long, and are never quiet until the darkness comes and pacifies them.

Outside it are exceedingly heavy and coarse Venetian shutters, a fairly good defense against a catapult.

The average [Italian] villa is properly a hospital for ailing and superannuated furniture.

There is a trick about an American house that is like the deep-lying untranslatable idioms of a foreign language--a trick uncatchable by the stranger, a trick incommunicable and indescribable; and that elusive trick, that intangible something, whatever it is, is just the something that gives the home look and the home feeling to an American house and makes it the most satisfying refuge yet invented by men--and women, mainly women.

...a French which he could get a patent on, because he invented it himself...a French which curdles the milk.

...fragrant with the odors of Presbyterian sanctity...

Of the ninety-six creditors, only three or four stood out for rigorous and uncompromising measures against me and refused to relent. The others said I could go free and take my own time. They said they obstruct me in no way and would bring no actions and they kept their word. As to the three or four, I have never resented their animosity, except in my Autobiography--and even there, not in spite, not in malice, but only frankly and in only a brief chapter chapter which can never wound them, for I have every confidence that they will be in hell before it is printed.