Mark Twain QuotesThis is a featured page

Mark Twain
  • "A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes."
  • "A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval."
  • "A man is never more truthful than when he acknowledges himself a liar."
  • "A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way. "
  • "A man's character may be learned from the adjectives which he habitually uses in conversation."
  • "A person who won't read has no advantage over one who can't read. "
  • "A person with a new idea is a crank until the idea succeeds."
  • "A round man cannot be expected to fit in a square hole right away. He must have time to modify his shape. "
  • "Action speaks louder than words but not nearly as often."
  • "Advertisements contain the only truths to be relied on in a newspaper."
  • "Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand."
  • "Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don't mind, it doesn't matter."
  • "All generalizations are false, including this one."
  • "All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence, and then success is sure. "
  • "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."
  • "Any emotion, if it is sincere, is involuntary."
  • "Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest."
  • "Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint."
  • "Cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education."
  • " 'Classic.' A book which people praise and don't read."
  • "Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society."
  • "Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear."
  • "Do the thing you fear most and the death of fear is certain."
  • "Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first."
  • "Don't let schooling interfere with your education."
  • "Don't part with your illusions. When they are gone, you may still exist, but you have ceased to live."
  • "Don't say the old lady screamed. Bring her on and let her scream. "
  • "Don't tell fish stories where the people know you; but particularly, don't tell them where they know the fish."
  • "Drag your thoughts away from your troubles... by the ears, by the heels, or any other way you can manage it. "
  • "Education consists mainly of what we have unlearned."
  • "Everything has its limit - iron ore cannot be educated into gold."
  • "Everything human is pathetic. The secret source of humor itself is not joy but sorrow. There is no humor in heaven. "
  • "Facts are stubborn, but statistics are more pliable. "
  • "Familiarity breeds contempt - and children."
  • "Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example. "
  • "Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn't."
  • "Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heal that has crushed it. "
  • "George Washington, as a boy, was ignorant of the commonest accomplishments of youth. He could not even lie."
  • "Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please."
  • "Giving up smoking is the easiest thing in the world. I know because I've done it thousands of times."
  • "Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company."
  • "God made the Idiot for practice, and then He made the School Board. "
  • "Golf is a good walk spoiled. "
  • "Good breeding consists in concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of the other person. "
  • "Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life. "
  • "Grief can take care if itself, but to get the full value of a joy you must have somebody to divide it with."
  • "Grief can take care of itself, but to get the full value of a joy you must have somebody to divide it with."
  • "He is now rising from affluence to poverty."
  • "Honesty is the best policy - when there is money in it. "
  • "Humor is mankind's greatest blessing. "
  • "Humor must not professedly teach and it must not professedly preach, but it must do both if it would live forever. "
  • "I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened."
  • "I can live for two months on a good compliment."
  • "I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it."
  • "I don't give a damn for a man that can only spell a word one way."
  • "I don't like to commit myself about heaven and hell - you see, I have friends in both places."
  • "I have been complimented many times and they always embarrass me; I always feel that they have not said enough. "
  • "I have made it a rule never to smoke more that one cigar at a time."
  • "I have never let my schooling interfere with my education."
  • "I have never taken any exercise except sleeping and resting."
  • "I make it a rule never to smoke while I'm sleeping."
  • "I must have a prodigious quantity of mind; it takes me as much as a week sometimes to make it up."
  • "I never let schooling interfere with my education."
  • "I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did. I said I didn't know."
  • "I was seldom able to see an opportunity until it had ceased to be one."
  • "I've never let my school interfere with my education. "
  • "Ideally a book would have no order to it, and the reader would have to discover his own. "
  • "If man could be crossed with the cat, it would improve man but deteriorate the cat."
  • "If you hold a cat by the tail you learn things you cannot learn any other way."
  • "If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything."
  • "In the first place, God made idiots. That was for practice. Then he made school boards."
  • "In the Spring, I have counted 136 different kinds of weather inside of 24 hours."
  • "It ain't those parts of the Bible that I can't understand that bother me, it is the parts that I do understand."
  • "It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so. "
  • "It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native criminal class except Congress. "
  • "It is better to deserve honors and not have them than to have them and not deserve them. "
  • "It is better to deserve honors and not have them than to have them and not to deserve them."
  • "It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt."
  • "It is better to take what does not belong to you than to let it lie around neglected. "
  • "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.
  • "It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare."
  • "It is easier to stay out than get out. "
  • "It is just like man's vanity and impertinence to call an animal dumb because it is dumb to his dull perceptions.''
  • "It is not best that we should all think alike; it is a difference of opinion that makes horse races."
  • "It is the will of God that we must have critics, and missionaries, and Congressmen, and humorists, and we must bear the burden. Meantime, I seem to have been drifting into criticism myself. But that is nothing. At the worst, criticism is nothing more than a crime, and I am not unused to that."
    "    It usually takes me more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech."
  • "It was wonderful to find America, but it would have been more wonderful to miss it."
    "    It's good sportsmanship to not pick up lost golf balls while they are still rolling."
  • "It's no wonder that truth is stranger than fiction. Fiction has to make sense."
  • "It's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog."
  • "Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see."
  • "Laws control the lesser man... Right conduct controls the greater one. "
  • "Let us live so that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry."
  • "Let us make a special effort to stop communicating with each other, so we can have some conversation. "
  • "Let us not be too particular; it is better to have old secondhand diamonds than none at all. "
  • "Life would be infinitely happier if we could only be born at the age of eighty and gradually approach eighteen."
  • ''Lord save us all from a hope tree that has lost the faculty of putting out blossoms."
  • "Loyalty to petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul. "
  • "Loyalty to the country always. Loyalty to the government when it deserves it."
  • "Man - a creature made at the end of the week's work when God was tired."
  • "Man is the only animal that blushes - or needs to."
  • "Man was made at the end of the week's work when God was tired."
  • "Man will do many things to get himself loved, he will do all things to get himself envied."
  • "Many a small thing has been made large by the right kind of advertising."
  • "Martyrdom covers a multitude of sins. "
  • "My books are like water; those of the great geniuses are wine. (Fortunately) everybody drinks water."
  • "My mother had a great deal of trouble with me, but I think she enjoyed it."
  • "Name the greatest of all inventors. Accident. "
  • "Necessity is the mother of taking chances."
  • "Never put off till to-morrow what you can do day after to-morrow just as well."
  • "Never put off till tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow. "
  • "No sinner is ever saved after the first twenty minutes of a sermon."
  • "Noise proves nothing. Often a hen who has merely laid an egg cackles as if she laid an asteroid."
  • "Nothing so needs reforming as other people's habits."
  • "Often it does seem a pity that Noah and his party did not miss the boat."
  • "One of the most striking differences between a cat and a lie is that a cat has only nine lives. "
  • ''Only kings, presidents, editors, and people with tapeworms have the right to use the editorial "we."
  • "Only one thing is impossible for God: To find any sense in any copyright law on the planet."
  • "Part of the secret of a success in life is to eat what you like and let the food fight it out inside."
  • "Patriot: the person who can holler the loudest without knowing what he is hollering about."
  • "Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it."
  • "Principles have no real force except when one is well-fed. "
  • "Prophesy is a good line of business, but it is full of risks."
  • "Prosperity is the best protector of principle. "
  • "Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself."
  • "Repartee is something we think of twenty-four hours too late."
  • "Soap and education are not as sudden as a massacre, but they are more deadly in the long run."
  • "Sometimes too much to drink is barely enough. "
  • "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."
  • "Such is the human race, often it seems a pity that Noah... didn't miss the boat."
  • "Suppose you were an idiot, and suppose you were a member of Congress; but I repeat myself."
  • "The best way to cheer yourself up is to try to cheer somebody."



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