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Directory of Mark Twain's maxims, quotations, and various opinions:

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HORSE


I am one of the poorest horsemen in the world, and I never mount a horse without experiencing a sort of dread that I may be setting out on that last mysterious journey which all of us must take sooner or later, and I never come back in safety from a horseback trip without thinking of my latter end for two or three days afterward.
- Letter to Sacramento Daily Union, 21 April 1866

If the horses knew their strength we should not ride anymore.
- Mark Twain's notebook #42


AI image created by R. Kent Rasmussen

My experience of horses is that they never throw away a chance to go lame, and that in all respects they are well meaning and unreliable animals. I have also observed that if you refuse a high price for a favorite horse, he will go and lay down somewhere and die.
- "Mark Twain's Interior Notes,"
San Francisco Bulletin
,
6 December 1866

I know the horse too well. I have known the horse in war and in peace, and there is no place where a horse is comfortable. A horse thinks of too many things to do which you do not expect. He is apt to bite you in the leg when you think he is half asleep. The horse has too many caprices, and he is too much given to initiative. He invents too many new ideas. No, I don't want anything to do with a horse.
- Mark Twain's Speeches,
10 November 1900

Clemens as buckaroo
Benjamin West Clinedinst's
illustration for an 1899 edition of
Roughing It.


The horses seem to be of a very fine breed, though I am not an expert in horses and do not speak with assurance. I can always tell which is the front end of a horse, but beyond that my art is not above the ordinary.
- Mark Twain, a Biography

AI image created by Barbara Schmidt

 

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