Mark Twain Quotes

Perfect grammar--persistent, continuous, sustained--is the fourth dimension, so to speak: many have sought it, but none has found it.

Find a job you enjoy doing, and you will never have to work a day in your life.

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.

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

The weakest of all weak things is a virtue which has not been tested in the fire.

Lord save us all from ... a hope tree that has lost the faculty of putting out blossoms.

Ours is a terrible religion. The fleets of the world could swim in spacious comfort in the innocent blood it has spilt.

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

I was born modest not all over but in spots.

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.

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

From his cradle to the grave a man never does a single thing which has any first and foremost object save one-to secure peace of mind spiritual comfort for himself.

Facts are stubborn things, but statistics are pliable.

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

I'll not go where there is any of that sort of thing going on, again. It's the sure way, and the only sure way;

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. All day long, the mill of his brain is grinding, and his thoughts, not those of other things, are his history. These are his life, and they are not written. Everyday would make a whole book of 80,000 words -- 365 books a year. Biographies are but the clothes and buttons of the man -- the biography of the man himself cannot be written.

An honest man in politics shines more there than he would elsewhere.- A Tramp Abroad

I would rather decline two drinks than one German adjective.

One should never use exclamation points in writing. It is like laughing at your own joke.

Never put off till tomorrow what may be done day after tomorrow just as well.

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

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

The air up there in the clouds is very pure and fine, bracing and delicious. And why shouldn't it be?--it is the same the angels breathe.

Darwin abolished special creations, contributed the Origin of Species and hitched all life together in one unbroken procession.

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.

This nation is like all the others that have been spewed upon the earth--ready to shout for any cause that will tickle its vanity or fill its pocket. What a hell of a heaven it will be when they get all these hypocrites assembled there!- Letter to J. H. Twichell, 1/29/1901

Love is a madness if thwarted it develops fast.

Don't say the old lady screamed. Bring her on and let her scream.

That kind of so-called housekeeping where they have six Bibles and no cork-screw.

Thou shalt not commit adultry is a command which makes no distinction between the following persons. They are all required to obey it: children at birth. Children in the cradle. School children. Youths and maidens. Fresh adults. Older ones. Men and women of 40. Of 50. Of 60. Of 70. Of 80. Of 100. The command does not distribute its burden equally, and cannot. It is not hard upon the three sets of children.

I didn't have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.

I said there was nothing so convincing to an Indian as a general massacre. If he could not approve of the massacre, I said the next surest thing for an Indian was soap and education. Soap and education are not as sudden as a massacre, but they are more deadly in the long run; because a half-massacred Indian may recover, but if you educate him and wash him, it is bound to finish him some time or other.

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

Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to reform (or pause and reflect).

Which is him?" The grammar was faulty, maybe, but we could not know, then, that it would go in a book someday.

Sometimes I wish we could hear of a country that’s out of kings.

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

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

Do I know you? I know you clear through. I was born and raised in the South, and I’ve lived in the North; so I know the average all around. The average man’s a coward.

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

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

By trying we can easily learn to endure adversity – another man’s, I mean.

I have made it a rule never to smoke more than one cigar at a time.

Never tell the truth to people who are not worthy of it.

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

Behold, the fool saith, "Put not all thine eggs in the one basket" - which is but a matter of saying, "Scatter your money and your attention"; but the wise man saith, "Pull all your eggs in the one basket and - WATCH THAT BASKET." - Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar

You know that kind of quiver that trembles around through you when you are seeing something so strange and enchanting and wonderful that it is just a fearful joy to be alive and look at it; and you know how you gaze, and your lips turn dry and your breath comes short, but you wouldn't be anywhere but there, not for the world.

Necessity is the mother of "taking chances."

Memories which someday will become all beautiful when the last annoyance that encumbers them shall have faded out of our minds.

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

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

It is strange the way the ignorant and inexperienced so often and so undeservedly succeed when the informed and the experienced fail. All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence, and then success is sure.

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

But old fools is the biggest fools there is.

He had had much experience of physicians, and said '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 druther not'.

The boys were amazed that I could make such a poem as that out of my own head, and so was I, of course, it being as much a surprise to me as it could be to anybody, for I did not know that it was in me. If any had asked me a single day before if it was in me, I should have told them frankly no, it was not.That is the way with us; we may go on half of our life not knowing such a thing is in us, when in reality it was there all the time, and all we needed was something to turn up that would call for it.

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.

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.

It usually takes me two or three days to prepare an impromptu speech.

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.