Mark Twain Quotes

1. A solemn, unsmiling, sanctimonious old iceberg who looked like he was waiting for a vacancy in the Trinity.
2. All the modern inconveniences.
3. A human being has a natural desire to have more of a good thing than he needs.
4. A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.
5. Adam was the luckiest man; he had no mother-in-law.
6. All war must be just the killing of strangers against whom you feel no personal animosity; strangers whom, in other circumstances, you would help if you found them in trouble, and who would help you if you needed it.
7. A man’s private thought can never be a lie; what he thinks, is to him the truth, always.
8. Adam and Eve had many advantages but the principal one was, that they escaped teething.
9. A baby is an inestimable blessing and bother.
10. A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way.
11. A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval.
12. 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.
13. An occultation of Venus is not half so difficult as an eclipse of the Sun, but because it comes seldom the world thinks it’s a grand thing.
14. A man is never more truthful than when he acknowledges himself a liar.
15. A man’s character may be learned from the adjectives which he habitually uses in conversation.
16. A habit cannot be tossed out the window; it must be coaxed down the stairs a step at a time.
17. Always acknowledge a fault. This will throw those in authority off their guard and give you an opportunity to commit more.
18. 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.
19. A person who won’t read has no advantage over one who can’t read.
20. A person with a new idea is a crank until the idea succeeds.
21. A round man cannot be expected to fit in a square hole right away. He must have time to modify his shape.
22. A big leather-bound volume makes an ideal razor strap. A thin 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.
23. Action speaks louder than words but not nearly as often.
24. Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand.
25. Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.
26. All generalizations are false, including this one.
27. All right, then, I’ll go to hell.
28. All you need is ignorance and confidence and the success is sure.
29. Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest.
30. 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.
31. Any emotion, if it is sincere, is involuntary.
32. Apparently there is nothing that cannot happen today.
33. As an example to others, and not that I care for moderation myself, it has always been my rule never to smoke when asleep, and never to refrain from smoking when awake.
34. A dozen direct censures are easier to bear than one morganatic compliment.
35. Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint.
36. Be careless in your dress if you will, but keep a tidy soul.
37. Better a broken promise than none at all.
38. Barring that natural expression of villainy which we all have, the man looked honest enough.
39. Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.
40. Biographies are but the clothes and buttons of the man. The biography of the man himself cannot be written.
41. By trying we can easily learn to endure adversity — another man’s I mean.
42. But who prays for Satan? Who, in eighteen centuries, has had the common humanity to pray for the one sinner that needed it most?
43. Buy land, they’re not making it anymore.
44. Cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education.
45. Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.
46. Conservatism is the blind and fear-filled worship of dead radicals.
47. Civilization is the limitless multiplication of unnecessary necessities.
48. Cast iron rules will not answer what is one man’s colon is another man’s comma.
49. Cold! If the thermometer had been an inch longer we’d have frozen to death.
50. Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear – not absence of fear.
51. ‘Classic.’ A book which people praise and don’t read.
52. Climate is what we expect, weather is what we get.
53. Concentration of power in a political machine is bad; and an Established Church is only a political machine; it was invented for that; it is nursed, cradled, preserved for that; it is an enemy to human liberty, and does no good which it could not bet.
54. Christianity will doubtless still survive in the earth ten centuries hence – stuffed and in a museum
55. Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt.
56. 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.
57. Do the right thing. It will gratify some people and astonish the rest.
58. Don’t go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first
59. Diligence is a good thing, but taking things easy is much more restful.
60. Do the thing you fear most and the death of fear is certain.
61. Don’t let schooling interfere with your education.
62. Don’t part with your illusions. When they are gone you may still exist, but you have ceased to live.
63. Drag your thoughts away from your troubles… by the ears, by the heels, or any other way you can manage it.
64. Do not undervalue the headache. While it is at its sharpest it seems a bad investment; but when relief begins, the unexpired remainder is worth $4 a minute.
65. Don’t say the old lady screamed. Bring her on and let her scream.
66. Don’t tell fish stories where the people know you; but particularly, don’t tell them where they know the fish.
67. Education: that which reveals to the wise, and conceals from the stupid, the vast limits of their knowledge.
68. Education consists mainly of what we have unlearned.
69. Everything has its limit – iron ore cannot be educated into gold.
70. Everything human is pathetic. The secret source of humor itself is not joy but sorrow. There is no humor in heaven.
71. Every time I reform in one direction I go overboard in another.
72. Education is the path from cocky ignorance to miserable uncertainty.
73. Each of you, for himself, by himself and on his own responsibility, must speak. And it is a solemn and weighty responsibility, and not lightly to be flung aside at the bullying of pulpit, press, government, or the empty catchphrases of politicians. Each must for himself alone decide what is right and what is wrong, and which course is patriotic and which isn’t. You cannot shirk this and be a man. To decide against your convictions is to be an unqualified and inexcusable traitor, both to yourself and to your country, let man label you as they may. If you alone of all the nation shall decide one way, and that way be the right way according to your convictions of the right, you have done your duty by yourself and by your country- hold up your head! You have nothing to be ashamed of.
74. Facts are stubborn things, but statistics are more pliable.
75. Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn’t.
76. Four years at West Point and plenty of books and schooling will learn a man a great deal, It won’t learn him the river.
77. Familiarity breeds contempt. How accurate that is. The reason we hold truth in such respect is because we have so little opportunity to get familiar with it.
78. Few sinners are saved after the first twenty minutes of a sermon.
79. France had neither winter nor summer nor morals – apart from these drawbacks it is a fine country.
80. Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please.
81. Grief can take care of itself, but to get the full value of a joy you must have somebody to divide it with.
82. Genius has no youth, but starts with the ripeness of age and old experience.
83. Giving up smoking is the easiest thing in the world. I know because I’ve done it thousands of times.
84. Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company.
85. God made the Idiot for practice, and then He made the School Board.
86. Golf is a good walk spoiled.
87. Good breeding consists in concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of the other person.
88. Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.
89. Grief can take care if itself, but to get the full value of a joy you must have somebody to divide it with.
90. Human pride is not worthwhile; there is always something lying in wait to take the wind out of it.
91. Habit is habit and not to be flung out of the window by any man, but coaxed downstairs a step at a time.
92. Heaven goes by favor; if it went by merit, you would stay out and your dog would go in.
93. Honesty is the best policy – when there is money in it.
94. 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.
95. He is now rising from affluence to poverty.
96. Humor must not professedly teach and it must not professedly preach, but it must do both if it would live forever.
97. He does not care for flowers. Calls them rubbish, and cannot tell one from another, and thinks it is superior to feel like that.
98. Half of the results of a good intentions are evil; half the results of an evil intention are good.
99. I am opposed to millionaires, but it would be dangerous to offer me the position.
100. I didn’t attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying that I approved of it.
101. I don’t give a damn for a man that can only spell a word one way.
102. I have a higher and grander standard of principle than George Washington. He could not lie; I can, but I won’t.
103. It may be called the master passion, the hunger for self-approval.
104. I have been through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened.
105. I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.
106. I have never taken any exercise except sleeping and resting.
107. 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.
108. I’ve come loaded with statistics, for I’ve noticed that a man can’t prove anything without statistics.
109. If you tell the truth you don’t have to remember anything.
110. I was gratified to be able to answer promptly. I said I don’t know.
111. I was seldom able to see an opportunity until it had ceased to be one.
112. I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened.
113. I can live for two months on a good compliment.
114. I don’t like to commit myself about heaven and hell – you see, I have friends in both places.
115. If you think knowledge is dangerous, try ignorance.
116. I’m glad I did it, partly because it was worth it, but mostly because I shall never have to do it again.
117. It used to be a good hotel, but that proves nothing – I used to be a good boy.
118. I can speak French but I cannot understand it.
119. 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.
120. Inherited ideas are a curious thing, and interesting to observe and examine.
121. In Paris they simply stared when I spoke to them in French; I never did succeed in making those idiots understand their language.
122. It is a mistake that there is no bath that will cure people’s manners, but drowning would help.
123. I once sent a dozen of my friends a telegram saying ‘flee at once – all is discovered.’ They all left town immediately.
124. It’s good sportsmanship not to pick up lost balls while they are still rolling.
125. In religion and politics, people’s beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second hand, and without examination.
126. It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly American criminal class except Congress.
127. It is better to deserve honors and not have them than to have them and not to deserve them.
128. It takes your enemy and your friend, working together, to hurt you: the one to slander you, and the other to get the news to you.
129. It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare.
130. I would much prefer to suffer from the clean incision of an honest lancet than from a sweetened poison.
131. It is easier to stay out than get out.
132. It usually takes more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech.
133. It was wonderful to find America, but it would have been more wonderful to miss it.
134. 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.
135. I have been complimented many times and they always embarrass me; I always feel that they have not said enough.
136. I was born excited.
137. I have made it a rule never to smoke more that one cigar at a time.
138. I make it a rule never to smoke while I’m sleeping.
139. I must have a prodigious quantity of mind; it takes me as much as a week sometimes to make it up.
140. Ideally a book would have no order to it, and the reader would have to discover his own.
141. It is not best that we all should think alike, it is differences of opinion that make horse races.
142. If you should rear a duck in the heart of the Sahara, no doubt it would swim if you brought it to the Nile.
143. If it’s your job to eat a frog, it’s best to do it first thing in the morning. And If it’s your job to eat two frogs, it’s best to eat the biggest one first.
144. If man could be crossed with the cat, it would improve man but deteriorate the cat.
145. It is better to take what does not belong to you than to let it lie around neglected.
146. If the world comes to an end, I want to be in Cincinnati. Everything comes there ten years later.
147. It’s not the size of the dog in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the dog.
148. Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see.
149. 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.
150. Let us be thankful for the fools. But for them the rest of us could not succeed.
151. Let us so live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.
152. Laws control the lesser man… Right conduct controls the greater one.
153. Laws are sand, customs are rock. Laws can be evaded and punishment escaped, but an openly transgressed custom brings sure punishment.
154. Let us live so that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.
155. Let us make a special effort to stop communicating with each other, so we can have some conversation.
156. Let us be grateful to Adam, our benefactor. He cut us out of the ‘blessing” of idleness and won for us the ”curse” of labor.
157. Let us not be too particular; it is better to have old secondhand diamonds than none at all.
158. Life would be infinitely happier if we could only be born at the age of eighty and gradually approach eighteen.
159. 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.
160. Lord save us all from a hope tree that has lost the faculty of putting out blossoms.
161. Loyalty to petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul.
162. Loyalty to the country always. Loyalty to the government when it deserves it.
163. Laws control the lesser man… Right conduct controls the greater one.
164. Man – a creature made at the end of the week’s work when God was tired.
165. Man is the only animal that blushes – or needs to.
166. Man was made at the end of the week’s work when God was tired.
167. Man will do many things to get himself loved, he will do all things to get himself envied.
168. Many a small thing has been made large by the right kind of advertising.
169. Martyrdom covers a multitude of sins.
170. My books are like water; those of the great geniuses are wine. (Fortunately) everybody drinks water.
171. My mother had a great deal of trouble with me, but I think she enjoyed it.
172. Name the greatest of all inventors. Accident.
173. Necessity is the mother of taking chances.
174. 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.
175. No real estate is permanently valuable but the grave.
176. Nothing seems to please a fly so much as to be taken for a currant, and if it can be baked in a cake and palmed off on the unwary, it dies happy.”
177. Names are not always what they seem. The common Welsh name BZJXXLLWCP is pronounced Jackson.
178. Never put off till tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow.
179. New Orleans food is as delicious as the less criminal forms of sin.
180. Noise proves nothing. Often a hen who has merely laid an egg cackles as if she laid an asteroid.
181. Nothing so needs reforming as other people’s habits.
182. Often it does seem a pity that Noah and his party did not miss the boat.
183. One of the most striking differences between a cat and a lie is that a cat has only nine lives.
184. October. This is one of the peculiarly dangerous months to speculate in stocks in. The others are July, January, September, April, November, May, March, June, December, August, and February.
185. One can enjoy a rainbow without necessarily forgetting the forces that made it.
186. Only kings, presidents, editors, and people with tapeworms have the right to use the editorial “we.
187. 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.
188. Only one thing is impossible for God: To find any sense in any copyright law on the planet.
189. One of my theories is that the hearts of men are about alike, no matter what their skin color.
190. Part of the secret of a success in life is to eat what you like and let the food fight it out inside.
191. Patriot: the person who can holler the loudest without knowing what he is hollering about.
192. Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it.
193. Principles have no real force except when one is well-fed.
194. Prophesy is a good line of business, but it is full of risks.
195. Prosperity is the best protector of principle.
196. Quitting smoking is easy. I’ve done it a thousand times.
197. Repartee is something we think of twenty-four hours too late.
198. Really great people make you feel that you, too, can become great.
199. Suppose you were an idiot and suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.
200. Sometimes my feelings are so hot that I have to take the pen and put them out on paper to keep them from setting me afire inside; then all that ink and labor are wasted because I can’t print the results.
201. Sing like no one’s listening, love like you’ve never been hurt, dance like nobody’s watching, and live like its heaven on earth.
202. Some civilized women would lose half their charm without dress and some would lose all of it.
203. Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on or by imbeciles who really mean it.
204. Soap and education are not as sudden as a massacre, but they are more deadly in the long run.
205. She is not refined. She is not unrefined. She keeps a parrot.
206. Sometimes too much to drink is barely enough.
207. 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.
208. Such is the human race, often it seems a pity that Noah… didn’t miss the boat.
209. Shut the door not that it lets in the cold but that it lets out the coziness.
210. The best way to cheer yourself is to try to cheer someone else up.
211. The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco.
212. The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.
213. The first half of life consists of the capacity to enjoy without the the chance; the last half consists of the chance without the capacity.
214. The human race has one really effective weapon, and that is laughter.
215. The right word may be effective, but no word was ever as effective as a rightly timed pause.
216. The universal brotherhood of man is our most precious possession.
217. The worst loneliness is not to be comfortable with yourself.
218. 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.
219. There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.
220. Time cools, time clarifies; no mood can be maintained quite unaltered through the course of hours.
221. Truth is more of a stranger than fiction.
222. The Christian’s Bible is a drug store. Its contents remain the same, but the medical practice changes.
223. To refuse awards is another way of accepting them with more noise than is normal.
224. The educated Southerner has no use for an ‘R’, except at the beginning of a word.
225. The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.
226. The finest clothing made is a person’s own skin, but, of course, society demands something more than this.
227. The first of April is the day we remember what we are the other 364 days of the year.
228. The human race is a race of cowards; and I am not only marching in that procession but carrying a banner.
229. Truth is the most valuable thing we have. Let us economize it.
230. There is nothing you can say in answer to a compliment. I have been complimented myself a great many times, and they always embarrass me –I always feel that they have not said enough.
231. Truth is mighty and will prevail. There is nothing wrong with this, except that it ain’t so.
232. The lack of money is the root of all evil.
233. The main difference between a cat and a lie is that a cat only has nine lives.
234. The man who is a pessimist before 48 knows too much; if he is an optimist after it, he knows too little.
235. 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.
236. The principle of give and take is the principle of diplomacy – give one and take ten.
237. To succeed in life, you need two things: ignorance and confidence.
238. The more things are forbidden, the more popular they become.
239. The more you explain it, the more I don’t understand it.
240. The most interesting information comes from children, for they tell all they know and then stop.
241. 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.
242. The Public is merely a multiplied “me.”
243. The public is the only critic whose opinion is worth anything at all.
244. The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.
245. The rule is perfect: in all matters of opinion our adversaries are insane.
246. The secret source of humor is not joy but sorrow; there is no humor in Heaven.
247. The trouble ain’t that there is too many fools, but that the lightning ain’t distributed right.
248. The highest perfection of politeness is only a beautiful edifice, built, from the base to the dome, of ungraceful and gilded forms of charitable and unselfish lying.
249. The trouble with the world is not that people know too little, but that they know so many things that ain’t so.
250. Travel has no longer any charm for me. I have seen all the foreign countries I want to except for heaven and hell, and I have only a vague curiosity as concerns one of those.
251. The very ink with which history is written is merely fluid prejudice.
252. The wit knows that his place is at the tail of a procession.
253. There are basically two types of people. People who accomplish things, and people who claim to have accomplished things. The first group is less crowded.
254. There isn’t a Parallel of Latitude but thinks it would have been the Equator if it had its rights.
255. 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.
256. There are two forces that can carry light to all corners of the globe – the sun in the heavens and the associated press down here.
257. There are lies, damned lies and statistics.
258. There are people who can do all fine and heroic things but one – keep from telling their happiness to the unhappy.
259. There are several good protections against temptation, but the surest is cowardice.
260. There are times when one would like to hang the whole human race, and finish the farce.
261. There is a charm about the forbidden that makes it unspeakably desirable.
262. There is no sadder sight than a young pessimist.
263. Thousands of geniuses live and die undiscovered – either by themselves or by others.
264. Thunder is good, thunder is impressive; but it is lightning that does the work.
265. To be good is noble; but to show others how to be good is nobler and no trouble.
266. Under certain circumstances, profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer.
267. Use the right word and not its second cousin.
268. Virtue has never been as respectable as money.
269. When people do not respect us we are sharply offended; yet in his private heart no man much respects himself.
270. Water, taken in moderation, cannot hurt anybody.
271. We Americans… bear the ark of liberties of the world.
272. We are all alike, on the inside.
273. We have the best government that money can buy.
274. What a good thing Adam had. When he said a good thing he knew nobody had said it before.
275. What a wee little part of a person’s life are his acts and his words! His real life is led in his head, and is known to none but himself.
276. What is the difference between a taxidermist and a tax collector? The taxidermist takes only your skin.
277. What, sir, would the people of the earth be without woman? They would be scarce, sir, almighty scarce.
278. When a person cannot deceive himself the chances are against his being able to deceive other people.
279. When angry, count to four; when very angry, swear.
280. When I was younger I could remember anything, whether it happened or not.
281. When in doubt tell the truth.
282. When people do not respect us we are sharply offended; yet in his private heart no man much respects himself.
283. When red-haired people are above a certain social grade their hair is auburn.
284. When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained.
285. When you fish for love, bait with your heart, not your brain.
286. 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 invented, which was human liberty.
287. We have not the reverent feeling for the rainbow that a savage has, because we know how it is made. We have lost as much as we gained by prying into that matter.
288. We have not the reverent feeling for the rainbow that a savage has, because we know how it is made. We have lost as much as we gained by prying into that matter.
289. 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.
290. When a person cannot deceive himself the chances are against his being able to deceive other people.
291. What a good thing Adam had. When he said a good thing he knew nobody had said it before.
292. We have no permanent brains until we are forty. Then they begin to harden, presently they petrify, then business begins. Since forty I have been regular about going to bed and getting up — and that is one of the main things.
293. Wine is a clog to the pen, not an inspiration.
294. We do not deal much in facts when we are contemplating ourselves
295. War talk by men who have been in a war is always interesting; whereas moon talk by a poet who has not been in the moon is likely to be dull
296. When your watch gets out of order you have choice of two things to do: throw it in the fire or take it .the watch-tinker. The former is the quickest.
297. Whatever a man’s age, he can reduce it several years by putting a bright-colored flower in his button-hole.
298. We are discreet sheep; we wait to see how the drove is going, and then go with the drove.
299. You can’t depend on your judgment when your imagination is out of focus.
300. You see, he was going for the Holy Grail. The boys all took a flier at the Holy Grail now and then. It was a several years’ cruise. They always put in the long absence snooping around, in the most conscientious way, though none of them had any idea where the Holy Grail really was, and I don’t think any of them actually expected to find it, or would have known what to do with it if he had run across it.