The Innocents Abroad

I am currently reading The Innocents Abroad, by Mark Twain. The book shows a great style of writing an a good sense of humor. As I read through the book, I will type the quotes of it that made me laugh!

-...They were like nearly all Frenchwomen I ever saw-homely. They had large hands, large feet, large mouths; they had pug noses as a general thing, and mustaches that not even good breeding could overlook...p120

- ... The gentle reader will never, never know what a consummate ass he can become, until he goes abroad. I speak now, of course, in the supposition that the gentle reader has not been abroad, and therefore is not a consummate ass. If the case be otherwise, I beg his pardon and extend to him the cordial hand of fellowship and call him brother.

- ... As far as I can see, Italy, for fifteen hundred years, has turned all her energies, all her energies, all her finances, and all her industry to the building up of a vast array of wonderful church edifices, and starving half her citizens to accomplish it...p202

- ... Look at the grand Duomo of Florence - a vast pile that has been sapping the purses of her citizens for five hundred years, and is not nearly finished yet. Like all other men, I fell down and worshiped it, but when the filthy beggars swarmed around me the contrast was too striking, too suggestive, and I said, "O, sons of classic Italy, is the spirit of enterprise, of self-reliance, of noble endeavor, utterly dead within ye? Curse your indolent worthlessness, why don't you rob your church?"...p203

- ... We never read of Pomprii but we think of that of that soldier; we can not write of Pompeii without the natural impulse to grant to him the mention he so well deserve. Let us remember that he was a soldier - not a policeman - and so, praise him. Being a soldier, he staid, - because the warrior instinct forbade hom to fly. Had he been a policeman he would have staid, also - because he would have been asleep. ... p265