The Innocents Abroad

They could suffer solitude, inactivity, and the horrors of a silence that no sound ever disturbed, but they could not bear the thought of being utterly forgotten by the world. Hence the carved names.

and veiled Moorish beauties (I suppose they are beauties)

The good Catholic Portuguese crossed himself and prayed God to shield him from all blasphemous desire to know more than his father did before him.

Care cannot assail us here. We are out of its jurisdiction.

I must have a prodigious quantity of mind; it takes me as much as a week sometimes to make it up.

This hood is of thick blue cloth, attached to a cloak of the same stuff, and is a marvel of ugliness.

If you wish to inflict a heartless and malignant punishment upon a young person, pledge him to keep a journal a year.

Many a one on our decks knew then for the first time how tame a sight his country's flag is at home compared to what it is in a foreign land. To see it is to see a vision of home itself and all its idols, and feel a thrill that would stir a very river of sluggish blood!

In that cave also are found human bones, crusted with a very thick, stony coating, and wise men have ventured to say that those men not only lived before the flood, but as much as ten thousand years before it. It may be true—it looks reasonable enough—but as long as those parties can't vote anymore, the matter can be of no great public interest.