Famous quotes by »

Mark Twain

Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835-1910) American author and humorist. Nineteenth century author of Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, Puddinhead Wilson, and others.

Update this biography »
Complete biography of Mark Twain »

34 fans

Sort by:PopularityA - Z

Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear - not absence of fear.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

I have never taken any exercise except sleeping and resting.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

If you take a dog which is starving and feed him and make him prosperous, that dog will not bite you. This is the primary difference between a dog and a man.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

In religion and politics people's beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination, from authorities who have not themselves examined the questions at issue but have taken them at second-hand from other non-examiners, whose opinions about them were not worth a brass farthing.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

Work and play are words used to describe the same thing under differing conditions.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

Each man must for himself alone decide what is right and what is wrong, which course is patriotic and which isn't. You cannot shirk this and be a man. To decide against your conviction is to be an unqualified and excusable traitor, both to yourself and to your country, let me label you as they may.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

Go and surprise the whole country by doing something right.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

Good breeding consists in concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of the other person.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

I did it partly because it was worth it, but mostly because I shall never have to do it again.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

I don't like to commit myself about heaven and hell you see, I have friends in both places.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

Under certain circumstances, profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

A little starvation can really do more for the average sick man than can the best medicines and the best doctors.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

Few sinners are saved after the fiirst twenty minutes of a sermon.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

If you don't read the newspaper, you're uninformed. If you read the newspaper, you're mis-informed.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

It's not that I'm afraid to die, I just don't want to be there when it happens.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

My kind of loyalty was to one's country, not to its institutions or its officeholders. The country is the real thing, the substantial thing, the eternal thing; it is the thing to watch over, and care for, and be loyal to; institutions are extraneous, they are its mere clothing, and clothing can wear out, become ragged, cease to be comfortable, cease to protect the body from winter, disease, and death.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

October is one of the peculiarly dangerous months to speculate in stocks. Others are July, January, April, September, November, May, March, June, December, August and February.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

Often, the surest way to convey misinformation is to tell the strict truth.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

On his deathbed Death, the only immortal who treats us all alike, whose pity and whose peace and whose refuse are for all -- the soiled and the pure, the rich and the poor, the loved and the unloved.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

Sane and intelligent human beings are like all other human beings, and carefully and cautiously and diligently conceal their private real opinions from the world and give out fictitious ones in their stead for general consumption.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

Those who say truth is stranger than fiction have wasted their time on poorly written fiction.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

Time cools, time clarifies; no mood can be maintained quite unaltered through the course of hours.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

When in doubt, tell the truth.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

Why is it that we rejoice at a birth and grieve at a funeral? It is because we are not the person involved.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do. Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

Work is a necessary evil to be avoided.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

In the first place, God made idiots. That was for practice. Then he made school boards

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

History may not repeat itself, but it sure does rhyme.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

I can live two weeks on a good compliment.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

There are lies, damned lies, and statistics.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

The history of our race, and each individual's experience, are sown thick with evidence that a truth is not hard to kill and that a lie told well is immortal.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

When I was fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have him around. When I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

Never allow someone to be your priority while allowing yourself to be their option.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

Nothing so needs reforming as other people's habits.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

There is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

Behold, the fool saith, Put not all thine eggs in the one basket, -- which is but a manner of saying, Scatter your money and your attention, but the wise man saith, Put all your eggs in the one basket and -- watch that basket.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

It has always been my rule never to smoke when asleep, and never to refrain when awake.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

After all these years I see that I was mistaken about Eve in the beginning it is better to live outside the Garden with her than inside it without her.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

All generalizations are false, including this one.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

I'm in favor of progress; it's change I don't like.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

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

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

You cannot depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

Love seems the swiftest, but it is the slowest of growths. No man or woman really knows what perfect love is until they have been married a quarter of a century.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

Sanity and happiness are an impossible combination.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it's time to pause and reflect.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

Kindness is a language which the deaf can hear, and the blind can read.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

I did not attend his funeral, but I wrote a nice letter saying I approved it.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

Often it does seem a pity that Noah and his party did not miss the boat.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

When angry, count four; when very angry, swear.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

A banker is a fellow who lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining, but wants it back the minute it begins to rain.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence then success is sure.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

How little a thing can make us happy when we feel that we have earned it.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

Against the assault of laughter, nothing can stand.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

If Christ were here now, there is one thing he would not be… a Christian.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

Wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

There are times when one would like to end the whole human race, and finish the farce.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don't mind, it doesn't matter.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

I admire the serene assurance of those who have religious faith. It is wonderful to observe the calm confidence of a Christian with four aces.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

Honesty is the best policy - when there is money in it.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

Suppose you were an idiot, and suppose you were a member of congress but I repeat myself.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

When one has tasted watermelon he knows what the angels eat.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

A patriot is mocked, scorned and hated; yet when his cause succeeds, all men will join him, for then it costs nothing to be a patriot.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

Everything has its limit--iron ore cannot be educated into gold. - 1906

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

It is better to deserve honors and not have them than to have them and not deserve them.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

Whenever you find that you are on the side of the majority, it is time to reform.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

Describing her first day back in grade school after a long absence, a teacher said, It was like trying to hold 35 corks under water at the same time.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

The proper office of a friend is to side with you when you are wrong. Nearly anybody will side with you when you are right.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

A classic is a book which people praise and don't read.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

He had discovered a great law of human action, without knowing it - namely, that in order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to obtain.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

Principles have no real force except when one is well-fed.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

Virtue has never been as respectable as money.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

Facts are stubborn, but statistics are more pliable.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

Humor is the great thing, the saving thing. The minute it crops up, all our irritations and resentments slip away and a sunny spirit takes their place.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

I thoroughly disapprove of duels. If a man should challenge me, I would take him kindly and forgivingly by the hand and lead him to a quiet place and kill him.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

I've had a lot of worries in my life, most of which never happened.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

Imagination is always the fabric of social life and the dynamic of history. The influence of real needs and compulsions, of real interests and materials, is indirect because the crowd is never conscious of it.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

Laws are sand, customs are rock. Laws can be evaded and punishment escaped but an openly transgressed custom brings sure punishment.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

lying to them is bad! I am a real person!

– mark twain

Rate it:

The fact that man knows right from wrong proves his intellectual superiority to other creatures but the fact that he can do wrong proves his moral inferiority to any creature that cannot.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

The secret source of humour itself is not joy, but sorrow. There is no humour in heaven.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

We are always too busy for our children; we never give them the time or interest they deserve. We lavish gifts upon them; but the most precious gift, our personal association, which means so much to them, we give grudgingly.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

[He was] a solemn, unsmiling, sanctimonious old iceberg who looked like he was waiting for a vacancy in the Trinity.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

Sacred cows make the best hamburgers.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

Habit is habit and not to be flung out of the window by any man, but coaxed downstairs a step at a time.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

Wagner's music is better than it sounds.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

Education consists mainly in what we have unlearned.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn't.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

It's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

The best cure for Christianity is reading the Bible.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

Cauliflower is nothing but Cabbage with a College Education.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

Do something every day that you don't want to do. This is the golden rule for acquiring the habit of doing your duty without pain.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

A verb has a hard enough time of it in this world when it is all together. It's downright inhuman to split it up. But that's what those Germans do. They take part of a verb and put it down here, like a stake, and they take the other part of it and put it a way over yonder like another stake, and between these two limits they just shovel in German.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

An Englishman is a person who does things because they have been done before. An American is a person who does things because they haven't been done before.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

Great people are those who make others feel that they, too, can become great.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

He would come in and say he changed his mind -- which was a gilded figure of speech, because he didn't have any.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

His ignorance covered the whole earth like a blanket, and there was hardly a hole in it anywhere.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

Never tell the truth to those unworthy of it....

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

Part of the secret of success in life is to eat what you like and let the food fight it out inside.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

Pessimism is only the name that men of weak nerve give to wisdom.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

Truth is more of a stranger than fiction.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

Quitting smoking is easy, I've done it hundreds of times.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

A house without a cat, and a well-fed, well-petted, and properly revered cat, may be a perfect house, perhaps, but how can it prove its title --from The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

A person whom Mark had small regard for, said: Mark, I recently chanced to pass by your house. To which Mark dryly replied: And may you always continue to do so.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

Good breeding consists of concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of the other person.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

An enemy can partly ruin a man, but it takes a good-natured injudicious friend to complete the thing and make it perfect.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

Necessity is the mother of taking chances.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

There is nothing so annoying as to have two people talking when you're busy interrupting.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

When I was younger, I could remember anything, whether it had happened or not.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

A man with a new idea is a crank -- until the idea succeeds.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence -- and then success is sure.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

Get your facts first and then you can distort them as much as you wish.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

Humor is the great thing, the saving thing. The minute it crops up, all our irritations and resentments slip away, and a sunny spirit takes their place.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

I was born modest. Not all over, but in spots.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

It usually takes more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

We are always more anxious to be distinguished for a talent which we do not possess, than to be praised for the fifteen which we do possess.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

Never put off until tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

My mother had a great deal of trouble with me, but I think she enjoyed it.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

The very ink with which history is written is merely fluid prejudice.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

In Paris they simply stared when I spoke to them in French I never did succeed in making those idiots understand their language.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

So far as I am able to judge, nothing has been left undone, either by man or nature, to make India the most extraordinary country that the sun visits on his rounds. Nothing seems to have been forgotten, nothing overlooked.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

Always acknowledge a fault. This will throw those in authority off their guard and give you an opportunity to commit more.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

At the beginning of a great national change, the patriot is a scarce man: scorned, ridiculed and forgotten. When his cause succeeds, however, all men will join him, for then it costs nothing to be a patriot.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

Barring that natural expression of villainy which we all have, the man looked honest enough.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

Drag your thoughts away from your troubles.. by the ears, by the heels, or any other way you can manage it.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

Fame is a vapor; popularity an accident; the only earthly certainty is oblivion.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

Fleas can be taught nearly anything a congressman can.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds upon the heel that crushes it.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

I never let schooling interfere with my education.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

I smoke in moderation, only one cigar at a time.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

It is easier to stay out than get out.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

Now what I contend is that my body is my own, at least I have always so regarded it. If I do harm through my experimenting with it, it is I who suffers, not the state.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

The radical of one century is the conservative of the next. The radical invents the views. When he has worn them out the conservative adopts them.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

There are times when one would like to hang the whole human race and finish the farce.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

We are chameleons, and our partialities and prejudices change place with an easy and blessed facility, and we are soon wonted to the change and happy in it.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

Friendship is the marriage of the soul, and this marriage is liable to divorce.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

It could probably be show by facts and figures that there is no distinctively native American criminal class except Congress.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

The mania for giving the Government power to meddle with the private affairs of cities or citizens is likely to cause endless trouble, through the rivaly of schools and creeds that are anxious to obtain official recognition, and there is great danger that our people will lose our independence of thought and action which is the cause of much of our greatness, and sink into the helplessness of the Frenchman or German who expects his government to feed him when hungry, clothe him when naked, to prescribe when his child may be born and when he may die, and, in time, to regulate every act of humanity from the cradle to the tomb, including the manner in which he may seek future admission to paradise.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

It is noble to teach oneself, but still nobler to teach others--and less trouble. - speech, 1906

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

I have spent most of my time worrying about things that have never happened.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

The billiard table is better than the doctor.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

There is no sadder sight than a young pessimist.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

All schools, all colleges have two great functions to confer, and to conceal valuable knowledge. - Notebook, 1908

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

It takes your enemy and your friend, working together, to hurt you: the one to slander you, and the other to bring the news to you.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

Religion consists of a set of things which the average man thinks he believes and wishes he was certain.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

There is nothing training cannot do. Nothing is above its reach. It can turn bad morals to good; it can destroy bad principles and recreate good ones; it can lift men to angelship.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

Lord save us all from old age and broken health and a hope tree that has lost the faculty of putting out blossoms.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

Irreverence is the champion of liberty and its one sure defense.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

A man never reaches that dizzy height of wisdom that he can no longer be led by the nose.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

I was gratified to be able to answer promptly. I said I don't know.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

I've come loaded with statistics, for I've noticed that a man can't prove anything without statistics.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

If the desire to kill and the opportunity to kill always came together, who would escape hanging?

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you; that is the principal difference between a dog and a man.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

In our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

Youth, large, lusty, loving- Youth, full of grace, force, fascination. Do you know that Old Age may come after you with equal grace, force, fascination

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

A human being has a natural desire to have more of a good thing than he needs.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

A man is accepted into church for what he believes--and turned out for what he knows.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

Adam and Eve had many advantages, but the principle one was that they escaped teething.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"--a strange complaint to come from the mouths of people who have had to live.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

By trying we can easily learn to endure adversity. Another man's, I mean.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

Grief can take care of itself, but to get the full value of a joy you must have somebody to divide it with.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

How come we rejoice at a birth and grieve at a funeral? It is because we are not the person involved.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

I am not one of those who in expressing opinions confine themselves to facts.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

Just the omission of Jane Austen's books alone would make a fairly good library out of a library that hadn't a book in it.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

The best way to cheer yourself up is to try to cheer someone else up.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

Thousands of geniuses live and die undiscovered - either by themselves or by others.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

Tomorrow night I appear for the first time before a Boston audience of 4000 critics.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

We have a criminal jury system which is superior to any in the world and its efficiency is only marred by the difficulty of finding twelve men every day who don't know anything and can't read.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

A great person is one who affects the younger generation by his positivity

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

Be good and you will be lonesome.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

Carlyle said, "A lie cannot live"; it shows he did not know how to tell them.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

Civilization is a limitless multiplication of unnecessary necessaries.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

Cold! If the thermometer had been an inch longer we'd all have frozen to death.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

Denial ain't just a river in Egypt.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

Do the thing you fear most and the death of fear is certain.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

Don't part with your illusions. When they are gone you may still exist, but you have ceased to live.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

During the gold rush its a good time to be in the pick and shovel business.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

Education: that which reveals to the wise, and conceals from the stupid, the vast limits of their knowledge.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

Eloquence is the essential thing in a speech, not information.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

Familiarity breeds contempt - and children.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

George Washington as a boy was ignorant of the commonest accomplishments of youth - he could not even lie.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please. (Facts are stubborn, but statistics are more pliable.)

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

God made the Idiot for practice, and then He made the School Board

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

Heaven goes by favour. If it went by merit, you would stay out and your dog would go in.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

Humor is mankind's greatest blessing.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

I am an old man and have a great many troubles, But most of them never happened.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

I am opposed to millionaires, but it would be dangerous to offer me the position.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

I am prepared to meet anyone, but whether anyone is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

I cannot call to mind a single instance where I have ever been irreverent, except toward the things which were sacred to other people.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

I cannot keep from talking, even at the risk of being instructive.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying that I approved of it.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

I don't give a damn for a man that can only spell a word one way.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

I have a prejudice against people who print things in a foreign language and add no translation. When I am the reader, and the other considers me able to do the translating myself, he pays me the quite a nice compliment-- but if he would do the translating for me I would try to get along without the compliment. (A Tramp Abroad,1880)

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

I have never examined the subject of humor until now. I am surprised to find how much ground it covers. I have got its divisions and frontiers down on a piece of paper. I find it defined as a production of the brain, as the power of the brain to produce something humorous, and the capacity of percieving humor.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

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

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

I never could tell a lie that anybody would doubt, nor a truth that anybody would believe.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

I never write Metropolis for seven cents because I can get the same price for city. I never write policeman because I can get the same money for cop.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

If we had less statemanship we could get along with fewer battleships.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

In certain trying circumstances, urgent circumstances, desperate circumstances, profanity furnishes a relief denied even to prayer.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

In Marseilles they make half the toilet soap we consume in America, but the Marseillaise only have a vague theoretical idea of its use, which they have obtained from books of travel.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

In religion and politics, people's beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second hand, and without examination.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

In the first place, God made idiots. That was for practice. Then he made school boards.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly American criminal class except Congress.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

It is a mistake that there is no bath that will cure people's manners, but drowning would help.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

It is better to deserve honors and not have them than to have them and not to deserve them.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

It is discouraging to try and penetrate a mind like yours. You ought to get it out and dance on it. That would take some of the rigidity out of it.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

It is noble to teach oneself, it is still nobler to teach others.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

It is the difference of opinion that makes horse races.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

It takes your enemy and your friend,working together,to hurt you to your heart:the one to slander you and the other to bring the news to you.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

It was enough to make a body ashamed of the human race.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

It was wonderful to find America, but it would have been more wonderful to miss it.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

It were not best that we should all think alike it is the difference of opinion that makes horse races. - from Pudd'nhead Wilson

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

It's easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.”

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

Language is a city to the building of which every human being brought a stone.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

Let us endeavor so to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

Let us not be too particular; it is better to have old secondhand diamonds than none at all.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

Life is so beautiful. Nobody can control your life

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

Loyalty to petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

Man is the only animal that blushes -- or needs to.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

Man will do many things to get himself loved he will do all things to get himself envied.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

Many a small thing has been made large by the right kind of advertising.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

Most people are bothered by those passages of Scripture they do not understand, but the passages that bother me are those I do understand.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

Of the delights of this world man cares most for sexual intercourse, yet he has left it out of his heaven.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

One of the most striking differences between a cat and a lie is that a cat has only nine lives.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

Our opinions do not really blossom into fruition until we have expressed them to someone else.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

Principles have no real force except when one is well fed.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

Providence protects children and idiots. I know because I have tested it.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

Religion consists in a set of things which the average man thinks he believes and wishes he was certain of.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

Soap and education are not as sudden as a massacre but they are more deadly in the long run.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

Some men worship rank, some worship heroes, some worship power, some worship God, and over these ideals they dispute, but they all worship money.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

Some people get an eduction without going to college the rest get it after they get out.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

Somewhere between the Angels and the French lies the rest of humanity.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

Statistics show that we lose more fools on this day than on all other days of the year put together. This proves, by the numbers left in stock, that one Fourth of July per year is now inadequate, the country has grown so.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

The best way to cheer yourself up is to try to cheer somebody else up.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

The first of April is the day we remember what we are the other 364 days of the year.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

The holy passion of Friendship is of so sweet and steady and loyal and enduring a nature that it will last through a whole lifetime, if not asked to lend money.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

The human race has one really effective weapon, and that is laughter.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

The man who is a pessimist before 48 knows too much if he is an optimist after it, he knows too little.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

The miracle, or the power, that elevates the few is to be found in their industry, application, and perseverance under the prompting of a brave, determined spirit.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

The report of my death was an exaggeration.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

The right word may be effective, but no word was ever as effective as a rightly timed pause.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

The rule is perfect in all matters of opinion our adversaries are insane.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

The trouble isn't that there are too many fools, but that the lightning isn't distributed right.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

The universal brotherhood of man is our most precious possession.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

The worst loneliness is not to be comfortable with yourself.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

There are people who strictly deprive themselves of each and every eatable, drinkable, and smokable which has in any way acquired a shady reputation. They pay this price for health. And health is all they get for it. How strange it is. It is like paying out your whole fortune for a cow that has gone dry.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

There are several good protections against temptations, but the surest is cowardice.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

There are some books that refuse to be written. They stand their ground year after year and will not be persuaded. It isn't because the book is not there and worth being written -- it is only because the right form of the story does not present itself. There is only one right form for a story and if you fail to find that form the story will not tell itself.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

There are two times in a man's life when he should not speculate when he can't afford it, and when he can. - from Following the Equator

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

There is no sadder sight than a young pessimist, except an old optimist.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

There is no such thing as the Queen's English. The property has gone into the hands of a joint stock company and we own the bulk of the shares

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

There ought to be a room in every house to swear in.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

This is the day upon which we are reminded of what we are on the other three hundred and sixty-four.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

Those that respect the law and love sausage should watch neither being made.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

Time cools, time clarifies no mood can be maintained quite unaltered through the course of hours.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

To be good is noble, but to teach others how to be good is nobler--and less trouble.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

To cease smoking is the easiset thing I ever did. I ought to know, I've done it a thousand times.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

Travel is lethal to prejudice.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

Water, taken in moderation, cannot hurt anybody.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

We all live in the protection of certain cowardices which we call our principles.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

We are called the nation of inventors. And we are. We could still claim that title and wear its loftiest honors if we had stopped with the first thing we ever invented, which was human liberty.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

We had the sky up there, and we used to lay on our backs and look up at them, and discuss whether they was made or just happened.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

We owe a deep debt of gratitude to Adam, the first great benefactor of the human race: he brought death into the world.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it - and stop there lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot stove-lid. She will never sit down on a hot stove-lid again - and that is well but also she will never sit down on a cold one anymore.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

What a good thing Adam had. When he said a good thing he knew nobody had said it before.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

What counts is not necessarily the size of the dog in the fight, what counts is the size of the fight in the dog.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

Whatever thing men call great, look for it in Joan of Arc, and there you will find it.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

When a person cannot deceive himself the chances are against his being able to deceive other people.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

When I was a child people simply looked about them and were moderately happy. Today they peer beyond the seven seas, bury themselves waist deep in tidings, and by and large what they see and hear makes them unutterably sad.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

When people do not respect us we are sharply offended; yet deep down in his private heart no man much respects himself.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

When you cannot get a compliment any other way pay yourself one.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

Whenever the literary German dives into a sentence, that is the last you are going to see of him until he emerges on the other side of his atlantic with his verb in his mouth.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

Why shoudn't truth be stranger than fiction Fiction, after all, has to stick to the possibilities.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

…[I]n order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to obtain.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

We all have thoughts that would shame the devil.

– Mark Twain

Rate it:

Share your thoughts on Mark Twain's quotes with the community:

1 Comment

Notify me of new comments via email.

Melanie Martinez Myall
I am looking for Mark Twain's quote on his frustration with talking to Christian's as if they always are holding a ace high straight flush
LikeReply 24 years ago