Mark Twain Quotes - Page 2

The worst loneliness is not to be comfortable with yourself.

Travel is fatal to narrowmindedness, prejudice and bigotry.

The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them.

Satan must have been pretty simple, even according to the New Testament, or he wouldn't have led Christ up on a high mountain and offered him the world if he would fall down and worship him. That was a manifestly absurd proposition, because Christ, as the Son of God, already owned the world; and besides, what Satan showed him was only a few rocky acres of Palestine. It is just as if some one should try to buy Rockefeller, the owner of all the Standard Oil Company, with a gallon of kerosene.

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

The face of the water, in time, became a wonderful book- a book that was a dead language to the uneducated passenger, but which told its mind to me without reserve, delivering its most cherished secrets as clearly as if it uttered them with a voice. And it was not a book to be read once and thrown aside, for it had a new story to tell every day.

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

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

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

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.

To be satisfied with what one has that is wealth. As long as one sorely needs a certain additional amount that man isn't rich.

Loyalty to country ALWAYS. Loyalty to government, when it deserves it.

′Classic′ - a book which people praise and don't read.

Write without pay until somebody offers to pay.

Tom Sawyer the Pirate looked around upon the envying juveniles about him and confessed in his heart that this was the proudest moment of his life.

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.

A public library is the most enduring of memorials, the trustiest monument for the preservation of an event or a name or an affection; for it, and it only, is respected by wars and revolutions, and survives

We don not think, in the holy places; we think in bed, afterwards, when the glare, and the the noise, and the confusion are gone, and in fancy we revisit alone, the solemn monuments of the past, and summon the phantom pageants of an age that has passed away.

It is by the goodness of god that in our country we have those 3 unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them.

She said all a body would have to do there [Heaven] was to go around all day long with a harp and sing, forever and ever.

There isn’t a parallel of latitude but thinks it would have been the equator if it had had its rights.

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

Diligence and attention soon gave him the knack of it, and he strode down the street with his mouth full of harmony and his soul full of gratitude. He felt much as an astronomer feels who has discovered a new planet—no doubt, as far as strong, deep, unalloyed pleasure is concerned, the advantage was with the boy, not the astronomer.

Herodotus says, "Very few things happen at the right time, and the rest do not happen at all: the conscientious historian will correct these defects.

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

Familiarity breeds contempt and children.

He pointed to the money, and said:"The love of it is the root of all evil. There it lies, the ancient tempter, newly red with the shame of its latest victory--the dishonor of a priest of God and his two poor juvenile helpers in crime. If it could but speak, let us hope that it would be constrained to confess that of all its conquests this was the basest and the most pathetic.

Mornings before daylight I slipped into cornfields and borrowed a watermelon, or a mushmelon, or a punkin, or some new corn, or things of that kind. Pap always said it warn’t no harm to borrow things if you was meaning to pay them back some time; but the widow said it warn’t anything but a soft name for stealing, and no decent body would do it.

Truth is stranger than fiction...

It is true, that which I have revealed to you; 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!

Get your facts first and then you can distort 'em as much as you please.

I deserve it all. Let the cold world do its worst; one thing I know--there's a grave somewhere for me. The world may go on just as its always done, and take everything from me--loved ones, property, everything--but it can't take that. Some day I'll lie down in it and forget it all, and my poor broken heart will be at rest.

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

What gets us into trouble is not what we don't know. It's what we know for sure that just ain't so.

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

To all intents and purposes Roxy was as white as anybody, but the one sixteenth of her which was black outvoted the other fifteen parts and made her a Negro. She was a slave, and salable as such.

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

The fragrance of the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.

Yes, I am of old family, and not illiterate. I am a fossil."   "A which?"   "Fossil. The first horses were fossils. They date back two million years.

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

When angry, count four. When very angry, swear.

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

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

Well, there was a sort of bastard justice in his view of the case, and so I dropped the matter. When you can't cure a disaster by argument, what is the use to argue?

It is not that I believe that there are too many idiots in this world, just that lightning isn't distributed right.

Humor is mankind's greatest blessing.

You can find in a text whatever you bring, if you will stand between it and the mirror of your imagination. You may not see your ears, but they will be there.

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

The gentle reader will never, never know what a consummate ass he can become until he goes abroad. I speak now, of course, in the supposition that the gentle reader has not been abroad, and therefore is not already a consummate ass. If the case be otherwise, I beg his pardon and extend to him the cordial hand of fellowship and call him brother. I shall always delight to meet an ass after my own heart when I have finished my travels.

Today the same thing over. I've got it up the tree again.

I wish I could make him understand that a loving good heart is riches enough, and that without it intellect is poverty.

There ain't no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than to travel with them.

There are two kinds of patriotism -- monarchical patriotism and republican patriotism. In the one case the government and the king may rightfully furnish you their notions of patriotism; in the other, neither the government nor the entire nation is privileged to dictate to any individual what the form of his patriotism shall be. The gospel of the monarchical patriotism is: "The King can do no wrong." We have adopted it with all its servility, with an unimportant change in the wording: "Our country, right or wrong!" We have thrown away the most valuable asset we had:-- the individual's right to oppose both flag and country when he (just he, by himself) believed them to be in the wrong. We have thrown it away; and with it all that was really respectable about that grotesque and laughable word, Patriotism.

A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.

Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand.

Any emotion, if it is sincere, is involuntary.

There are those who would misteach us that to stick in a rut is consistency - and a virtue and that to climb out of the rut is inconsistency - and a vice.

Education consists mainly of what we have unlearned.

Giving up smoking is the easiest thing in the world. I know because I've done it thousands of times.

A home without a cat — and a well-fed, well-petted and properly revered cat — may be a perfect home, perhaps, but how can it prove title?