Letters from the Earth: Uncensored Writings QUOTES

21 " Your country and mine is an interesting one, but there is nothing there that is half so interesting as the human mind. "

― Mark Twain , Letters from the Earth: Uncensored Writings

22 " James Elly Kleinman, a cousin of mine was seriously ill two or three weeks ago, in New York, but is well now. The report of my illness grew out of his illness, the report of my death was an exaggeration. "

― Mark Twain , Letters from the Earth: Uncensored Writings

23 " His heaven is like himself: strange, interesting, astonishing, grotesque. I give you my word, it has not a single feature in it that he actually values. It consists -- utterly and entirely -- of diversions which he cares next to nothing about, here in the earth, yet is quite sure he will like them in heaven. Isn't it curious? Isn't it interesting? You must not think I am exaggerating, for it is not so. I will give you details. "

― Mark Twain , Letters from the Earth: Uncensored Writings

24 " Do not bring your dog. (advice for attending a funeral) "

― Mark Twain , Letters from the Earth: Uncensored Writings

25 " The first time the Deity came down to earth, he brought life and death; when he came the second time, he brought hell. "

― Mark Twain , Letters from the Earth: Uncensored Writings

26 " His heaven is like himself: strange, interesting, astonishing, grotesque. I give you my word, it has not a single feature in it that he actually values. "

― Mark Twain , Letters from the Earth: Uncensored Writings

27 " It is full of interest, it has noble poetry in it and some clever fables and some blood drenched history, some good morals and a wealth of obscenity and upwards of a thousand lies.
(Re The Bible) "

― Mark Twain , Letters from the Earth: Uncensored Writings

28 " Life was not a valuable gift, but death was. Life was a fever-dream made up of joys embittered by sorrows, pleasure poisoned by pain; a dream that was a nightmare-confusion of spasmodic and fleeting delights, ecstasies, exultations, happinesses, interspersed with long-drawn miseries, griefs, perils, horrors, disappointments, defeats,humiliations, and despairs--the heaviest curse devisable by divine ingenuity; but death was sweet, death was gentle, death was kind; death healed the bruised spirit and the broken heart, and gave them rest and forgetfulness; death was man's best friend; when man could endure life no longer, death came and set him free. "

― Mark Twain , Letters from the Earth: Uncensored Writings

29 " Presently a serpent sought them out privately, and came to them walking upright, which was the way of serpents in those days. The serpent said the forbidden fruit would store their vacant minds with knowledge. So they ate it, which was quite natural, for man is so made that he eagerly wants to know; whereas the priest, like God, whose imitator and representative he is, has made it his business from the beginning to keep him from knowing any useful thing. "

― Mark Twain , Letters from the Earth: Uncensored Writings

30 " The Church still prizes the Moral Sense as man's noblest asset today, although the Church knows God had a distinctly poor opinion of it and did what he could in his clumsy way to keep his happy Children of the Garden from acquiring it. "

― Mark Twain , Letters from the Earth: Uncensored Writings

31 " Сега не съм по-мързелив, отколкото бях преди 40г., но то е защото още преди 40г. бях достигнал крайния предел на мързела. Човек не е в състояние да надхвърли възможностите ти. "

― Mark Twain , Letters from the Earth: Uncensored Writings

32 " In time, the Deity perceived that death was a mistake; a mistake, in that it was insufficient; insufficient, for the reason that while it was an admirable agent for the inflicting of misery upon the survivor, it allowed the dead person himself to escape from all further persecution in the blessed refuge of the grave. This was not satisfactory. A way must be conceived to pursue the dead beyond the tomb.

The Deity pondered this matter during four thousand years unsuccessfully, but as soon as he came down to earth and became a Christian his mind cleared and he knew what to do. He invented hell, and proclaimed it. "

― Mark Twain , Letters from the Earth: Uncensored Writings

33 " Then, having thus made the Creator responsible for all those pains and diseases and miseries above enumerated, and which he could have prevented, the gifted Christian blandly calls him Our Father!

It is as I tell you. He equips the Creator with every trait that goes to the making of a fiend, and then arrives at the conclusion that a fiend and a father are the same thing! Yet he would deny that a malevolent lunatic and a Sunday school superintendent are essentially the same. "

― Mark Twain , Letters from the Earth: Uncensored Writings

34 " To proceed with the Biblical curiosities. Naturally you will think the threat to punish Adam and Eve for disobeying was of course not carried out, since they did not create themselves, nor their natures nor their impulses nor their weaknesses, and hence were not properly subject to anyone's commands and not responsible to anybody for their acts.It will surprise you to know that the threat was carried out. Adam and Eve were punished and that crime finds apologists unto this day.The sentence of death was executed. "

― Mark Twain , Letters from the Earth: Uncensored Writings

35 " They forget to mention that he is the slowest mover in the universe; that his Eye that never sleeps, might as well, since it takes it a century to see what any other eye would see in a week; that in all history there is not an instance where he thought of a noble deed first, but always thought of it just a little after somebody else had thought of it and done it. He arrives then, and annexes the dividend. "

― Mark Twain , Letters from the Earth: Uncensored Writings

36 " A Christian mother's first duty is to soil her child's mind, and she does not neglect it. Her lad grows up to be a missionary, and goes to the innocent savage and to the civilized Japanese, and soils their minds. Whereupon they adopt immodesty, they conceal their bodies, they stop bathing naked together. "

― Mark Twain , Letters from the Earth: Uncensored Writings

37 " He killed all those people -- every male.
They had offended the Deity in some way. We know what the offense was, without looking; that is to say, we know it was a trifle; some small thing that no one but a god would attach any importance to. It is more than likely that a Midianite had been duplicating the conduct of one Onan, who was commanded to "go into his brother's wife" -- which he did; but instead of finishing, "he spilled it on the ground." The Lord slew Onan for that, for the lord could never abide indelicacy....
Some Midianite must have repeated Onan's act, and brought that dire disaster upon his nation. If that was not the indelicacy that outraged the feelings of the Deity, then I know what it was: some Midianite had been pissing against the wall. I am sure of it, for that was an impropriety which the Source of all Etiquette never could stand. A person could piss against a tree, he could piss on his mother, he could piss on his own breeches, and get off, but he must not piss against the wall -- that would be going quite too far. The origin of the divine prejudice against this humble crime is not stated; but we know that the prejudice was very strong -- so strong that nothing but a wholesale massacre of the people inhabiting the region where the wall was defiled could satisfy the Deity. "

― Mark Twain , Letters from the Earth: Uncensored Writings

38 " The two testaments are interesting, each in its own way. The old one gives us a picture of these people's deity as he was before he got religion, the other one gives us a picture of him as he appeared afterward. "

― Mark Twain , Letters from the Earth: Uncensored Writings