Man is the only animal that blushes. Or needs to.

Following the Equator, Twain’s account of his lecture tour round the world in 1895-96, opens each chapter with an entry from ‘Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar’: Twain’s own maxims, put under the name of the almanac-maker from his 1894 novel. This entry, with ‘The universal brotherhood of man is our most precious possession, what there is of it’, heads the chapter in which Twain, sailing past Tasmania, writes about the destruction of its Aboriginal people by the British settlers: the years of killing, the bounty of five pounds for every captured ‘Black’, the governor’s picture-proclamations nailed to trees. He writes with savage irony, ‘How glad I am that all these native races are dead and gone, or nearly so.’

Of all animals only humans feel shame, and they are also the only ones with so much to be ashamed of.

Quoted as a light jab at human vanity. In the book it heads a chapter on the extermination of the Tasmanians, and the shame it means is shame for that.

Morality, Evil, Conscience, Emotions

• Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn’t.
• If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man.
• Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe. (not found) Albert Einstein
• Golf is a good walk spoiled. (not found)
• Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go. (not found) Oscar Wilde

• en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Mark_Twain

Mark Twain, Following the Equator (1897), Chapter XXVII, epigraph from Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar. Spoken by Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar. Checked at Quotogeny, https://quotogeny.com/q/only-animal-that-blushes/ (31 October 2026).

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