Mark Twain Quotes

No creed of religion can sustain unsullied purity, or support its high destination, which is mingled with the corruptions of human government. Christianity is in its essence, its doctrine, and its forms, republican. It teaches our descent from a common parent; in inculcates the natural equality in mankind; and it points to our origin and our end, to our nativity and our graves, to our immortal destinies, as illustrations of this impressive truth. But at an early period it was pressed into the service of the potentates of the earth; the unnatural union of church and state was consummated; and the scepter of Constantine was supported by the cross of Jesus. The light of knowledge was shut out from the general mass, and confined to the select organs of tyranny; and man was for ages enveloped in the thickest gloom of intellectual and moral darkness

Dark Ages

There is no opposition party. And the party that is in power is falling apart. Doesn't that kind of mean the country's falling apart? I don't wanna be accused of being an alarmist, but if there's nothing to replace the government with in terms of an opposition party, and you see it all falling down around you, well doesn't that mean that we're all kind of screwed? It kind of feels that way to me. And I'm pretty worried about it, to be honest with you.

In western civilization, the period ruled by mysticism is known as the 'Dark Ages' and the 'Middle Ages'. I will assume that you know the nature of that period and the state of human existence in those ages. The Renaissance broke the rules of the mystics. "Renaissance" means the "rebirth". Few people today will care to remind you that it was a rebirth of reason - of man's mind.

There once was a time when all people believed in God and the church ruled. This time was called the Dark Ages.

I learned a lot that night. For example, that part of being the magician's assistant means coming face-to-face with illusion. That invisibility is really just knotting your body in a certain way and letting the black curtain fall over you. That people don't vanish into thin air; that when you can't find someone, it's because you've been misdirected to look elsewhere.

Greatness and goodness are not means, but ends! Hath he not always treasures, always friends, The good great man? Three treasures, love and light, And calm thoughts, regular as infants' breath; And three firm friends, more sure than day and night, Himself, his Maker, and the angel Death.

In the Christian sense, love is not primarily an emotion but an act of the will. When Jesus tells us to love our neighbors, he is not telling us to love them in the sense of responding to them with a cozy emotional feeling. You can as well produce a cozy emotional feeling as you can a cough or sneeze. On the contrary, he is telling us to love our neighbors in the sense of being willing to work for their well-being even if it means sacrificing our well-being to that end.

Translator Dlique was saying, very earnestly, “Eggs are so inadequate, don't you think? I mean, they ought to be able to become anything, but instead you always get a chicken. Or a duck. Or whatever they're programmed to be. You never get anything interesting, like regret, or the middle of the night last week.

The fall of the present bureaucratic dictatorship [in the Soviet Union], if it were not replaced by a new socialist power, would thus mean a return to capitalist relations with a catastrophic decline of industry and culture.

United States, your banner wears Two emblems--one of fame; Alas! the other that it bears Reminds us of your shame. Your banner's constellation types White freedom with its stars, But what's the meaning of the stripes? They mean your negroes' scars.

The only means of establishing and perpetuating our republican forms of government is the universal education of our youth in the principles of Christianity by means of the Bible.

These were African-Arab-Asian values. The only section of Europe that had a high value system during the Dark Ages was the, were those on the Iberian Peninsula in the Spanish-Portuguese area, southern France.

Cooking, I mean, food, cooking foods is just everything that I do from morning to night. It's how I choose to live my life: through cooking, people that are in food culture. And I love it.

Just because your world is falling apart doesn't mean you have to fall apart. When everything seems crazy, you be calm. Don't let the outer chaos you are facing get inside of you.

Freedom is not an empty sound; it is not an abstract idea; it is not a thing that nobody can feel. It means, - and it means nothing else, - the full and quiet enjoyment of your own property. If you have not this, if this be not well secured to you, you may call yourself what you will, but you are a slave.

E have men sold to build churches, women sold to support the gospel, and babes sold to purchase Bibles for the poor heathen, all for the glory of God and the good of souls. The slave auctioneer's bell and the church-going bell chime in with each other, and the bitter cries of the heart-broken slave are drowned in the religious shouts of his pious master. Revivals of religion and revivals in the slave trade go hand in hand.

..because when we look up into the sky at night there will be no darkness, just the blazing light of billions and billions of stars, all falling.

Look at the cross and you will know what one soul means to Jesus.

Being Christian is not just obeying orders but means being in Christ, thinking like him, acting like him, loving like him; it means letting him take possession of our life and change it, transform it, and free it from the darkness of evil and sin. ... Let us show the joy of being children of God, the freedom that living in Christ gives us which is true freedom, the freedom that saves us from the slavery of evil, of sin and of death!

It's good to have a fear of heights. I mean, it's kind of crazy not to because if you just lean out a little bit and there's a gust of wind or somebody bumps you or something and you fall, you're splat.

We are opposed around the world by a monolithic and ruthless conspiracy that relies primarily on covert means for expanding its sphere of influence — on infiltration instead of invasion, on subversion instead of elections, on intimidation instead of free choice, on guerrillas by night instead of armies by day

The first thing that I've got to think about is: What does a Donald Trump presidency mean for the people of my state and for the people of this country? And for the people of the world? I think it would be an absolute disaster. It would be beyond a disaster.

Those who regarded the revolution, during Imam Khomeini's time, as a deviation, are now [wielding] the tools of terror and oppression