Mark Twain Quotes

Substitute 'damn' every time you're inclined to write 'very'; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.

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

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

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

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

I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did. I said I didn't know.

But who prays for Satan? Who, in eighteen centuries, has had the common humanity to pray for the one sinner that needed it most?

Loyalty to the country always. Loyalty to the government when it deserves it.

Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't.

Wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been.

Books are for people who wish they were somewhere else.

What would men be without women? Scarce, sir...mighty scarce.

Sanity and happiness are an impossible combination.

When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.

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

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

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

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

You can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.

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 man.

Education: the path from cocky ignorance to miserable uncertainty.

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

Everyone is a moon, and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody.

Never argue with stupid people, they will drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience.

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

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

I've lived through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened.

Name the greatest of all inventors. Accident.

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

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.

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

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

The worst loneliness is not to be comfortable with yourself.

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

History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme.

April 1. This is the day upon which we are reminded of what we are on the other three hundred and sixty-four..

A clear conscience is the sure sign of a bad memory.

If animals could speak, the dog would be a blundering outspoken fellow; but the cat would have the rare grace of never saying a word too much.

Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.

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

I have found out that there ain't no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than to travel with them.

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

Any emotion, if it is sincere, is involuntary.

Of all the animals, man is the only one that is cruel. He is the only one that inflicts pain for the pleasure of doing it.

To get the full value of joy you must have someone to share it with

Life is short, Break the Rules. Forgive quickly, Kiss SLOWLY. Love truly. Laugh uncontrollably And never regret ANYTHING That makes you smile.

Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured.

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

The most interesting information comes from children, for they tell all they know and then stop.

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

If voting made any difference they wouldn't let us do 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.

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

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

The more I know people, the more I love my dog.

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

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

The dog is a gentleman; I hope to go to his heaven not man's.

There is a charm about the forbidden that makes it unspeakably desirable.

Of all God's creatures, there is only one that cannot be made slave of the leash. That one is the cat. If man could be crossed with the cat it would improve the man, but it would deteriorate the cat.

I have a higher and grander standard of principle than George Washington. He could not lie; I can, but I won't.

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

You meet people who forget you. You forget people you meet. But sometimes you meet those people you can't forget. Those are your 'friends

Education consists mainly of what we have unlearned.

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

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

Give every day the chance to become the most beautiful day of your life.

Action speaks louder than words but not nearly as often.

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

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

If Christ were here there is one thing he would not be"”a Christian.

Obscurity and competence - that is the life that is best worth living

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

Thunder is good, thunder is impressive; but it is lightning that does the work.

Humor is tragedy plus time.

The trouble with the world is not that people know too little; it's that they know so many things that just aren't so.

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

I can teach anybody how to get what they want out of life. The problem is that I can't find anybody who can tell me what they want.

There's one way to find out if a man is honest: ask him; if he says yes, you know he's crooked.

Never argue with a fool, onlookers may not be able to tell the difference.

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

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

We may not pay Satan reverence, for that would be indiscreet, but we can at least respect his talents.

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

Be good and you will be lonely.

When you fish for love, bait with your heart, not your brain.

The older I get, the more clearly I remember things that never happened.

The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex overwhelming tasks into small manageable tasks, and starting on the first one.

Let us be thankful for the fools. But for them the rest of us could not succeed.

Familiarity breeds contempt - and children.

Now and then we had a hope that if we lived and were good, God would permit us to be pirates.

Civilization is the limitless multiplication of unnecessary necessities.

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

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.

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

Facts are stubborn, but statistics are more pliable.

It's easy to endure adversity — if it happens to someone else.

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

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.

Life does not consist mainly, or even largely, of facts or happenings. It consist mainly of the storm of thoughts that is forever flowing through one's head.

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.

The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.

Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it.

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

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

When I was younger, I could remember anything, whether it had happened or not; but my faculties are decaying now and soon I shall be so I cannot remember any but the things that never happened. It is sad to go to pieces like this but we all have to do it.

A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval.

Ignorant people think it is the noise which fighting cats make that is so aggravating, but it ain't so; it is the sickening grammar that they use.

Write without pay until somebody offers to pay.

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

The government is merely a servant"•merely a temporary servant; it cannot be its prerogative to determine what is right and what is wrong, and decide who is a patriot and who isn't. Its function is to obey orders, not originate them.

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.

Too much of anything is bad, but too much good whiskey is barely enough.

Noise proves nothing. Often a hen who has merely laid an egg cackles as if she laid an asteroid.

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

When red-haired people are above a certain social grade their hair is auburn.

The only difference between a tax man and a taxidermist is that the taxidermist leaves the skin.

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

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

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

A big leather-bound volume makes an ideal razorstrap. A thing book is useful to stick under a table with a broken caster to steady it. A large, flat atlas can be used to cover a window with a broken pane. And a thick, old-fashioned heavy book with a clasp is the finest thing in the world to throw at a noisy cat.

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

The less there is to justify a traditional custom, the harder it is to get rid of it

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

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.

Distance lends enchantment to the view.

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

for business reasons, I must preserve the outward signs of sanity.

Nothing that grieves us can be called little: by the eternal laws of proportion a child's loss of a doll and a king's loss of a crown are events of the same size.

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

While the rest of the species is descended from apes, redheads are descended from cats.

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

It is easier to stay out than get out.

The secret source of humor is not joy but sorrow; there is no humor in Heaven.

Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand.

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

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

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

A man's character may be learned from the adjectives which he habitually uses in conversation.

I can live for two months on a good compliment.

A man is never more truthful than when he acknowledges himself a liar.

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

I was sorry to have my name mentioned as one of the great authors, because they have a sad habit of dying off. Chaucer is dead, Spencer is dead, so is Milton, so is Shakespeare, and I'm not feeling so well myself.

Conservatism is the blind and fear-filled worship of dead radicals.

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

Man was made at the end of the week's work, when God was tired.

New Orleans food is as delicious as the less criminal forms of sin.

Most writers regard the truth as their most valuable possession, and therefore are economical in its use.

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

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

Hain't we got all the fools in town on our side? And hain't that a big enough majority in any town?

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

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.

You can't reason with your heart; it has its own laws, and thumps about things which the intellect scorns.

They did not know it was impossible so they did it

Use the right word, not its second cousin.

It is better to be alone than unwelcome. - Eve

My kind of loyalty was loyalty 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.

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

The more things are forbidden, the more popular they become.

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

Be careless in your dress if you will, but keep a tidy soul.

If everyone was satisfied with himself, there would be no heroes.

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.

Nature knows no indecencies; man invents them.

It ain't those parts of the Bible that I can't understand that bother me, it is the parts that I do understand.

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

Really great people make you feel that you, too, can become great.

Wit is the sudden marriage of ideas which, before their union, were not perceived to have any relation.

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

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

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

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.

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."

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

Necessity is the mother of taking chances.

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

whenever the literary german dives into a sentence, this is the last you are going to see of him till he emerges on the other side of his atlantic with his verb in his mouth.

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

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

A person with a new idea is a crank until the idea succeeds.

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

Satan hasn't a single salaried helper; the Opposition employs a million.

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

There are people who can do all fine and heroic things but one - keep from telling their happiness to the unhappy.

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

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

When in doubt tell the truth.

Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company.

There is nothing to be learned from the second kick of a mule.

Why shouldn't truth be stranger than fiction? Fiction, after all, has to make sense.

Life would be infinitely happier if we could only be born at the age of eighty and gradually approach eighteen.

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

If you hold a cat by the tail you learn things you cannot learn any other way.

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

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

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

Climate is what we expect, weather is what we get.

The offspring of riches: Pride, vanity, ostentation, arrogance, tyranny

Hunger is the handmaid of genius

I have no race prejudices, and I think I have no color prejudices or caste prejudices nor creed prejudices. Indeed I know it. I can stand any society. All that I care to know is that a man is a human being-that is enough for me; he can't be any worse.

To succeed in life, you need two things: ignorance and confidence.

We can secure other people's approval, if we do right and try hard but our own is worth a hundred of it, and no way has been found out of securing that

The only way to keep your health is to eat what you don't want, drink what you don't like, and do what you'd rather not.

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

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

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

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

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

If you have nothing to say, say nothing.

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

All say, "˜how hard it is that we have to die' — a strange complaint to come from the mouths of those who have had to live.

To be good is noble; but to show others how to be good is nobler and no trouble.

There are people who think that honesty is always the best policy. This is a superstition. There are times when the appearance of it is worth six of it.

I deal with temptation by yielding to it.

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

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

There is no sadder sight than a young pessimist.

Concerning the difference between man and the jackass: some observers hold that there isn't any. But this wrongs the jackass.

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

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

If you don't like the weather in New England now, just wait a few minutes.

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

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

Love is madness, if thwarted it develops fast.

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

The church is always trying to get other people to reform, it might not be a bad idea to reform itself a little, by way of example

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

The idea that no gentleman ever swears is all wrong. He can swear and still be a gentleman if he does it in a nice and benevolent and affectionate way.

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

Work is a necessary evil to be avoided.

If you can't get a compliment any other way, pay yourself one.

There is no unhappiness like the misery of sighting land (and work) again after a cheerful, careless voyage.

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.

There isn't anything you can't stand if you are only born and bred to it.

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

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

Wagner's music is better than it sounds.

Water, taken in moderation, cannot hurt anybody.

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

Who is this Renaissance? Where did he come from? Who gave him permission to cram the Republic with his execrable daubs?

Have a place for everything and keep the thing somewhere else. This is not advice, it is merely custom.

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

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

Sacred cows make the best hamburger.

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

I think a compliment ought always to precede a complaint, where one is possible, because it softens resentment and insures for the complaint a courteous and gentle reception

I have never taken any exercise except sleeping and resting

Golf is a good walk spoiled.

Virtue has never been as respectable as money.

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

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

I was seldom able to see an opportunity until it had ceased to be one.

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

One mustn't criticize other people on grounds where he can't stand perpendicular himself

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

Nothing so needs reforming as other people's habits.

Truth is more of a stranger than fiction.

Denial ain't just a river in Egypt.

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.

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

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

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

There are no grades of vanity; there are only grades of ability in concealing it.

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

There are no people who are quite so vulgar as the over-refined.

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

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

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

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.

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

I was born modest; not all over, but in spots.

Biographies are but the clothes and buttons of the man. The biography of the man himself cannot be written.

Always do what's right. That will gratify some and surprise the rest.

All generalizations are false, including this one.

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

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

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

Fortune knocks at every man's door once in a life, but in a good many cases the man is in a neighboring saloon and does not hear her.

If a person offends you, and you are in doubt as to whether it was intentional or not, do not resort to extreme measures; simply watch your chance, and hit him with a brick.

Optimist: day dreamer more elegantly spelled.

There is no God, no universe, no human race, no earthly life, no heaven, no hell. It is all a dream, a grotesque and foolish dream. Nothing exists but you. And you are but a thought -a vagrant thought, a useless thought, a homeless thought, wandering forlorn among the empty eternities!