Mark Twain Quotes
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“It's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog.”
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“It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.”
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“If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything.”
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“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.”
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“Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don't mind, it doesn't matter.”
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“Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.”
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“Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please.”
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“Suppose you were an idiot, and suppose you were a member of Congress; but I repeat myself.”
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“All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence, and then success is sure.”
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“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.”
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“The secret of getting ahead is getting started.”
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“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.”
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“The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.”
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“In the first place, God made idiots. That was for practice. Then he made school boards.”
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“Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.”
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“My mother had a great deal of trouble with me, but I think she enjoyed it.”
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“A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way.”
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“The lack of money is the root of all evil.”
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“Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear.”
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“Buy land, they're not making it anymore.”
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“Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it.”
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“Do the right thing. It will gratify some people and astonish the rest.”
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“I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened.”
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“Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company.”
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“Never put off till tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow.”
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“You can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.”
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“It ain't those parts of the Bible that I can't understand that bother me, it is the parts that I do understand.”
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“Giving up smoking is the easiest thing in the world. I know because I've done it thousands of times.”
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“In the Spring, I have counted 136 different kinds of weather inside of 24 hours.”
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“Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't.”
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“Golf is a good walk spoiled.”
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“The best way to cheer yourself up is to try to cheer somebody else up.”
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“Don't let schooling interfere with your education.”
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“Do the thing you fear most and the death of fear is certain.”
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“Action speaks louder than words but not nearly as often.”
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“The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.”
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“Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.”
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“Part of the secret of a success in life is to eat what you like and let the food fight it out inside.”
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“Denial ain't just a river in Egypt.”
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“A man's character may be learned from the adjectives which he habitually uses in conversation.”
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“When you fish for love, bait with your heart, not your brain.”
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“I can live for two months on a good compliment.”
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“All generalizations are false, including this one.”
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“There is no distinctly American criminal class - except Congress.”
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“Never pick a fight with people who buy ink by the barrel.”
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“Everything human is pathetic. The secret source of humor itself is not joy but sorrow. There is no humor in heaven.”
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“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.”
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“Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.”
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“Let us endeavor so to live so that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.”
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“There are people who can do all fine and heroic things but one - keep from telling their happiness to the unhappy.”
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“Thunder is good, thunder is impressive; but it is lightning that does the work.”
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“We have the best government that money can buy.”
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“The human race has one really effective weapon, and that is laughter.”
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“Life would be infinitely happier if we could only be born at the age of eighty and gradually approach eighteen.”
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“Facts are stubborn, but statistics are more pliable.”
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“It usually takes me more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech.”
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“Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint.”
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“Loyalty to petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul.”
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“Don't part with your illusions. When they are gone, you may still exist, but you have ceased to live.”
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“I don't like to commit myself about heaven and hell - you see, I have friends in both places.”
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“There are lies, damned lies and statistics.”
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“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.”
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“It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare.”
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“Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.”
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“A person who won't read has no advantage over one who can't read.”
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“The right word may be effective, but no word was ever as effective as a rightly timed pause.”
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“I came in with Halley's Comet in 1835. It is coming again next year, and I expect to go out with it. It will be the greatest disappointment of my life if I don't go out with Halley's Comet. The Almighty has said, no doubt: 'Now here are these two unaccountable freaks; they came in together, they must go out together.'”
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“Humor is mankind's greatest blessing.”
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“The first of April is the day we remember what we are the other 364 days of the year.”
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“Cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education.”
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“I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it.”
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“Many a small thing has been made large by the right kind of advertising.”
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“Apparently there is nothing that cannot happen today.”
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“Laws control the lesser man… Right conduct controls the greater one.”
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“A man is never more truthful than when he acknowledges himself a liar.”
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“Wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been.”
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“Everything has its limit - iron ore cannot be educated into gold.”
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“It's no wonder that truth is stranger than fiction. Fiction has to make sense.”
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“She was not quite what you would call refined. She was not quite what you would call unrefined. She was the kind of person that keeps a parrot.”
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“Name the greatest of all inventors. Accident.”
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“Climate is what we expect, weather is what we get.”
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“When in doubt tell the truth.”
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“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts.”
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“The trouble ain't that there is too many fools, but that the lightning ain't distributed right.”
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“The more things are forbidden, the more popular they become.”
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“If the world comes to an end, I want to be in Cincinnati. Everything comes there ten years later.”
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“If you hold a cat by the tail you learn things you cannot learn any other way.”
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“The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it.”
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“Only one thing is impossible for God: To find any sense in any copyright law on the planet.”
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“I must have a prodigious quantity of mind; it takes me as much as a week sometimes to make it up.”
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“But who prays for Satan? Who, in eighteen centuries, has had the common humanity to pray for the one sinner that needed it most?”
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“Grief can take care if itself, but to get the full value of a joy you must have somebody to divide it with.”
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“There is a charm about the forbidden that makes it unspeakably desirable.”
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“Only kings, presidents, editors, and people with tapeworms have the right to use the editorial 'we.'”
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“Be careless in your dress if you must, but keep a tidy soul.”
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“I was seldom able to see an opportunity until it had ceased to be one.”
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“It were not best that we should all think alike; it is difference of opinion that makes horse races.”
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“Patriot: the person who can holler the loudest without knowing what he is hollering about.”
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“Under certain circumstances, urgent circumstances, desperate circumstances, profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer.”
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“There is no sadder sight than a young pessimist.”
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“A person with a new idea is a crank until the idea succeeds.”
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“The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter - 'tis the difference between the lightning-bug and the lightning.”
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“Necessity is the mother of taking chances.”
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“The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them.”
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“Often it does seem such a pity that Noah and his party did not miss the boat.”
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“A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval.”
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“Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example.”
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“What is the difference between a taxidermist and a tax collector? The taxidermist takes only your skin.”
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“I don't give a damn for a man that can only spell a word one way.”
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“When people do not respect us we are sharply offended; yet in his private heart no man much respects himself.”
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“The very ink with which history is written is merely fluid prejudice.”
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“The most interesting information comes from children, for they tell all they know and then stop.”
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“If man could be crossed with the cat it would improve man, but deteriorate the cat.”
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“Soap and education are not as sudden as a massacre, but they are more deadly in the long run.”
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“Civilization is the limitless multiplication of unnecessary necessities.”
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“Familiarity breeds contempt - and children.”
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“To refuse awards is another way of accepting them with more noise than is normal.”
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“I never let schooling interfere with my education.”
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“Truth is mighty and will prevail. There is nothing wrong with this, except that it ain't so.”
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“Prosperity is the best protector of principle.”
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“Truth is the most valuable thing we have. Let us economize it.”
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“Work is a necessary evil to be avoided.”
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“Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do. Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.”
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“Why is it that we rejoice at a birth and grieve at a funeral? It is because we are not the person involved.”
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“The main difference between a cat and a lie is that a cat only has nine lives.”
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“All emotion is involuntary when genuine.”
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“When angry, count to four; when very angry, swear.”
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“What, sir, would the people of the earth be without woman? They would be scarce, sir, almighty scarce.”
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“Lord save us all from old age and broken health and a hope tree that has lost the faculty of putting out blossoms.”
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“When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained.”
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“Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond; cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education.”
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“All right, then, I'll go to hell.”
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“Noise proves nothing. Often a hen who has merely laid an egg cackles as if she laid an asteroid.”
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“Do not tell fish stories where the people know you; but particularly, don't tell them where they know the fish.”
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“It's good sportsmanship to not pick up lost golf balls while they are still rolling.”
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“My books are like water; those of the great geniuses are wine. (Fortunately) everybody drinks water.”
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“Against the assault of laughter, nothing can stand.”
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“Man will do many things to get himself loved, he will do all things to get himself envied.”
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“No sinner is ever saved after the first twenty minutes of a sermon.”
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“Principles have no real force except when one is well-fed.”
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“The human race is a race of cowards; and I am not only marching in that procession but carrying a banner.”
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“There are several good protections against temptation, but the surest is cowardice.”
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“When your friends begin to flatter you on how young you look, it's a sure sign you're getting old.”
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“Let us not be too particular; it is better to have old secondhand diamonds than none at all.”
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“Wit is the sudden marriage of ideas which, before their union, were not perceived to have any relation.”
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“The public is the only critic whose opinion is worth anything at all.”
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“It is better to take what does not belong to you than to let it lie around neglected.”
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“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.”
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“The Public is merely a multiplied 'me.'”
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“Man was made at the end of the week's work, when God was tired.”
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“I have never taken any exercise, except sleeping and resting, and I never intend to take any.”
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“Thousands of geniuses live and die undiscovered - either by themselves or by others.”
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“By trying we can easily learn to endure adversity. Another man's, I mean.”
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“It is better to deserve honors and not have them than to have them and not deserve them.”
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“Loyalty to the Nation all the time, loyalty to the Government when it deserves it.”
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“Ideally a book would have no order to it, and the reader would have to discover his own.”
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“Man is the only animal that blushes - or needs to.”
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“Biographies are but the clothes and buttons of the man. The biography of the man himself cannot be written.”
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“The man who is a pessimist before 48 knows too much; if he is an optimist after it, he knows too little.”
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“God made the Idiot for practice, and then He made the School Board.”
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“I never smoke to excess - that is, I smoke in moderation, only one cigar at a time.”
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“We are all alike, on the inside.”
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“Good breeding consists in concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of the other person.”
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“I have been complimented many times and they always embarrass me; I always feel that they have not said enough.”
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“A round man cannot be expected to fit in a square hole right away. He must have time to modify his shape.”
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“Why shouldn't truth be stranger than fiction? Fiction, after all, has to make sense.”
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“Drag your thoughts away from your troubles… by the ears, by the heels, or any other way you can manage it.”
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“Nothing so needs reforming as other people's habits.”
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“Few of us can stand prosperity. Another man's, I mean.”
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“Repartee is something we think of twenty-four hours too late.”
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“To be good is noble; but to show others how to be good is nobler and no trouble.”
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“Sometimes too much to drink is barely enough.”
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“He is now rising from affluence to poverty.”
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“It is easier to stay out than get out.”
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“Honesty is the best policy - when there is money in it.”
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“Don't say the old lady screamed. Bring her on and let her scream.”
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“India has 2,000,000 gods and worships them all. In religion, all other countries are paupers; India is the only millionaire.”
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“In 'Huckleberry Finn,' I have drawn Tom Blankenship exactly as he was. He was ignorant, unwashed, insufficiently fed; but he had as good a heart as ever any boy had.”
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“It is just like man's vanity and impertinence to call an animal dumb because it is dumb to his dull perceptions.”
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“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.”
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“I make it a rule never to smoke while I'm sleeping.”
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“The Christian's Bible is a drug store. Its contents remain the same, but the medical practice changes.”
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“Education consists mainly of what we have unlearned.”
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“Water, taken in moderation, cannot hurt anybody.”
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“When red-haired people are above a certain social grade their hair is auburn.”
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“'Classic.' A book which people praise and don't read.”
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“Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn't.”
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“There are times when one would like to hang the whole human race, and finish the farce.”
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“The rule is perfect: in all matters of opinion our adversaries are insane.”
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“It was wonderful to find America, but it would have been more wonderful to miss it.”
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“How lucky Adam was. He knew when he said a good thing, nobody had said it before.”
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“Prophesy is a good line of business, but it is full of risks.”
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“The educated Southerner has no use for an 'r', except at the beginning of a word.”
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“Martyrdom covers a multitude of sins.”
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“We Americans… bear the ark of liberties of the world.”
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“When I was younger I could remember anything, whether it happened or not.”
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“The finest clothing made is a person's own skin, but, of course, society demands something more than this.”
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“Better a broken promise than none at all.”
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“Words are only painted fire; a look is the fire itself.”
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“The wit knows that his place is at the tail of a procession.”
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“One of the most striking differences between a cat and a lie is that a cat has only nine lives.”
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“Let us make a special effort to stop communicating with each other, so we can have some conversation.”
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“It put our energies to sleep and made visionaries of us - dreamers and indolent… It is good to begin life poor; it is good to begin life rich - these are wholesome; but to begin it prospectively rich! The man who has not experienced it cannot imagine the curse of it.”
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“When a person cannot deceive himself the chances are against his being able to deceive other people.”
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“The secret source of humor is not joy but sorrow; there is no humor in Heaven.”
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“Humor must not professedly teach and it must not professedly preach, but it must do both if it would live forever.”
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“It is my belief that nearly any invented quotation, played with confidence, stands a good chance to deceive.”
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“I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did. I said I didn't know.”
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“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.”
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“George Washington, as a boy, was ignorant of the commonest accomplishments of youth. He could not even lie.”
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“Optimist: day dreamer more elegantly spelled.”