
The Innocents Abroad

The donkeys and the men, women, and children of a family all eat and sleep in the same room, and are unclean, are ravaged by vermin, and are truly happy.
Mark Twain • The Innocents Abroad
I would seriously recommend to the government of the United States that when a man commits a crime so heinous that the law provides no adequate punishment for it, they make him Consul General to Tangier.
Mark Twain • The Innocents Abroad
It was the aurora borealis of the frozen pole exiled to a summer land!
Mark Twain • The Innocents Abroad
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!
Mark Twain • The Innocents Abroad
This hood is of thick blue cloth, attached to a cloak of the same stuff, and is a marvel of ugliness.
Mark Twain • The Innocents Abroad
It is in communities like this that Jesuit humbuggery flourishes. We visited a Jesuit cathedral nearly two hundred years old and found in it a piece of the veritable cross upon which our Saviour was crucified. It was polished and hard, and in as excellent a state of preservation as if the dread tragedy on Calvary had occurred yesterday instead of
... See moreMark Twain • The Innocents Abroad
I have caught a glimpse of the faces of several Moorish women (for they are only human, and will expose their faces for the admiration of a Christian dog when no male Moor is by), and I am full of veneration for the wisdom that leads them to cover up such atrocious ugliness.
Mark Twain • The Innocents Abroad
The community is eminently Portuguese—that is to say, it is slow, poor, shiftless, sleepy, and lazy.
Mark Twain • The Innocents Abroad
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.