{"author":"Mark Twain","author_id":"Mark+Twain","total_quotes":632,"quotes":[{"text":"After a long time and many questions, Satan said, 'The spider kills the fly, and eats it; the bird kills the spider and eats it; the wildcat kills the goose; the -- well, they all kill each other. It is murder all along the line. Here are countless multitudes of creatures, and they all kill, kill, kill, they are all murderers. And they are not to blame, Divine One?","author":"Mark Twain","tags":["god","satan"],"id":727,"author_id":"Mark+Twain"},{"text":"A successful book is not made of what is in it, but what is left out of it.","author":"Mark Twain","tags":["books","humor","on-writing","wit","writing"],"id":1971,"author_id":"Mark+Twain"},{"text":"The preacher who casts a vote for conscience' sake, runs the risk of starving.","author":"Mark Twain","tags":["conscience","preachers","voting"],"id":2390,"author_id":"Mark+Twain"},{"text":"From his cradle to the grave  a man never does a single thing which has any first and foremost object save one-to secure peace of mind  spiritual comfort  for himself.","author":"Mark Twain","tags":["goals"],"id":3388,"author_id":"Mark+Twain"},{"text":"I conceive that the right way to write a story for boys is to write so that it will not only interest boys but strongly interest any man who has ever been a boy. That immensely enlarges the audience.","author":"Mark Twain","tags":["writers","writing"],"id":3588,"author_id":"Mark+Twain"},{"text":"There spoke the race!' he said; 'always ready to claim what it hasn't got, and mistake its ounce of brass filings for a ton of gold-dust. You have a mongrel perception of humor, nothing more; a multitude of you possess that. This multitude see the comic side of a thousand low-grade and trivial things--broad incongruities, mainly; grotesqueries, absurdities, evokers of the horse-laugh. The ten thousand high-grade comicalities which exist in the world are sealed from their dull vision. Will a day come when the race will detect the funniness of these juvenilities and laugh at them--and by laughing at them destroy them? For your race, in its poverty, has unquestionably one really effective weapon--laughter. Power, money, persuasion, supplication, persecution-- these can lift at a colossal humbug--push it a little--weaken it a little, century by century; but only laughter can blow it to rags and atoms at a blast. Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand. You are always fussing and fighting with your other weapons. Do you ever use that one? No; you leave it lying rusting. As a race, do you ever use it at all? No; you lack sense and the courage.","author":"Mark Twain","tags":["human-race","humor","perception"],"id":3854,"author_id":"Mark+Twain"},{"text":"You can find in a text whatever you bring, if you will stand between it and the mirror of your imagination. You may not see your ears, but they will be there.","author":"Mark Twain","tags":["imagination","perception","philosophy","reality"],"id":4730,"author_id":"Mark+Twain"},{"text":"The radical invents the views. When he has worn them out  the conservative adopts them.","author":"Mark Twain","tags":["politics"],"id":5440,"author_id":"Mark+Twain"},{"text":"A man is accepted into a church for what he believes and he is turned out for what he knows.","author":"Mark Twain","tags":["religion"],"id":7608,"author_id":"Mark+Twain"},{"text":"Humor must not professedly teach and it must not professedly preach, but it must do both if it would live forever.","author":"Mark Twain","tags":["live","teach","forever "],"id":7832,"author_id":"Mark+Twain"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":632,"pages":64,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}