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Directory of Mark Twain's maxims, quotations, and various opinions:

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

WOMAN

Now, why will a man, when he gets to be a thousand years old, go on hanging around the women, and taking chances on fire and brimstone, instead of joining the church and endeavoring, with humble spirit and contrite heart, to ring in at the eleventh hour, like the thief on the cross? Why will he?
- Letter to Virginia City Territorial Enterprise, December 5, 1863

What, Sir, would the people of the earth be without woman? They would be scarce, sir, almighty scarce.
- Speech, January 11, 1868

After all these years, I see that I was mistaken about Eve in the beginning; it is better to live outside the Garden with her than inside it without her.
- "Adam's Diary"

The reason novelists nearly always fail in depicting women when they make them act, is that they let them do what they have observed some woman has done at some time or another. And that is where they make a mistake; for a woman will never do again what has been done before.
- The Gilded Age

Women cannot receive even the most palpably judicious suggestion without arguing it; that is, married women.
- "Experience of the McWilliamses with Membraneous Croup"

There is nothing comparable to the endurance of a woman. In military life she would tire out an army of men, either in camp or on the march.
- Mark Twain's Autobiography

Clemens, Rogers, & Harvey
Samuel Clemens, Henry H. Rogers
and Irene Gerken -- at the Princess Hotel in Bermuda. (Irene Gerken identified by her granddaughter, Irene Harlow.)
Photo from and courtesy of the
Kevin Mac Donnell collection.

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