Mark Twain Quotes - Page 3

Barring that natural expression of villainy which we all have the man looked honest enough.

How empty is theory in the presence of fact!

It's no wonder that truth is stranger than fiction. Fiction has to make sense.

I am persuaded that a coldly-thought-out and independent verdict upon a fashion in clothes, or manners, or literature, or politics, or religion, or any other matter that is projected into the field of our notice and interest, is a most rare thing -- if it has indeed ever existed.

Be good and you will be lonesome.

It isn't so astonishing the number of things that I can remember as the number of things I can remember that aren't so.

The thing for us to do is just to do our duty, and not worry about whether anybody sees us do it or not.

The human race has only one really effective weapon and that is laughter.

Beautiful credit! The foundation of modern society. Who shall say that this is not the golden age of mutual trust, of unlimited reliance upon human promises? That is a peculiar condition of society which enables a whole nation to instantly recognize point and meaning in the familiar newspaper anecdote, which puts into the mouth of a distinguished speculator in lands and mines this remark: 'I wasn't worth a cent two years ago, and now I owe two millions of dollars.

Wrinkles should merely indicate where the smiles have been.

It gave an appalling idea of the value of an hour, and I thought I could never waste one again without remorse and terror.

Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.

You cannot surprise an individual more than twice with the same marvel

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.

It don't make no difference whether you do right or wrong, a person's conscience ain't got no sense, and just goes for him anyway.

I was seldom able to see an opportunity until it had ceased to be one.

Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear-not absence of fear. Except a creature be part coward it is not a compliment to say it is brave; it is merely a loose misapplication of the word. Consider the flea!-Incomparably the bravest of all the creatures of God, if ignorance of fear were courage. Whether you are asleep or awake he will attack you, caring nothing for the fact that in bulk and strength you are to him as are the massed armies of the earth to a sucking child; he lives both day and night and all days and nights in the very lap of peril and the immediate presence of death, and yet is no more afraid than is the man who walks the streets of a city that was threatened by an earthquake ten centuries before. When we speak of Clive, Nelson, and Putnam as men who "didn't know what fear was," we ought always to add the flea-and put him at the head of the procession.

I have been an author for 20 years and an ass for 55.

One ought always to lie, when one can do good by it;

I know grammar by ear only, not by note, not by the rules.

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.

In your country and mine we should have the privilege of making fun of this kind of morality, but it would be unkind to do it here.Many of these people have the reasoning faculty, but no one uses it in religious matters.

The more I learn about people, the more I like my dog.

When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained.

Unconsciously we all have a standard by which we measure other men, and if we examine closely we find that this standard is a very simple one, and is this: we admire them, we envy them, for great qualities we ourselves lack. Hero worship consists in just that. Our heroes are men who do things which we recognize, with regret, and sometimes with a secret shame, that we cannot do. We find not much in ourselves to admire, we are always privately wanting to be like somebody else. If everybody was satisfied with himself, there would be no heroes.

If I were to construct a God I would furnish Him with some way and qualities and characteristics which the Present lacks.

I went to Maui to stay a week and remained five. I never spent so pleasant a month before, or bade any place goodbye so regretfully. I have not once thought of business, or care or human toil or trouble or sorrow or weariness, and the memory of it will remain with me always.

Some people get an education without going to college. The rest get it after they get out.

The perfection of wisdom, and the end of true philosophy is to proportion our wants to our possessions, our ambitions to our capacities, we will then be a happy and a virtuous people.

You will be more disappointed in life by the things that you do not do than by the things that you do.

Many a small thing has been made large by the right kind of advertising.

Warm summer sun, shine brightly here, Warm Southern wind, blow softly here, Green sod above, lie light, lie light, Good night, dear heart; good night, good night.

Evolution is a blind giant who rolls a snowball down a hill. The ball is made of flakes—circumstances. They contribute to the mass without knowing it. They adhere without intention, and without foreseeing what is to result. When they see the result they marvel at the monster ball and wonder how the contriving of it came to be originally thought out and planned. Whereas there was no such planning, there was only a law: the ball once started, all the circumstances that happened to lie in its path would help to build it, in spite of themselves.

I said it was a brutal thing."No, it was a human thing. You should not insult the brutes by such a misuse of that word; they have not deserved it.

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.

Jim said he believed it was spirits, but I says: no, spirits wouldn't say "dern the dern fog".

Education: that which reveals to the wise, and conceals from the stupid, the vast limits of their knowledge.

Honesty: The best of all the lost arts.

The common eye sees only the outside of things, and judges by that, but the seeing eye pierces through and reads the heart and the soul.

There is a charm about the forbidden that makes it unspeakably desirable.

There's one way to find out if a man is honest: ask him; if he says yes, you know he's crooked.

One frequently only finds out how really beautiful a women is, until after considerable acquaintance with her.

You can't reason with your heart; it has its own laws, and thumps about things which the intellect scorns.

Conservatism is the blind and fear-filled worship of dead radicals.

That's the difference between governments and individuals. Governments don't care, individuals do.

I always take Scotch whiskey at night as a preventive of toothache. I have never had the toothache; and what is more, I never intend to have it.

Human nature appears to be just the same, all over the world

Nothing exists; all is a dream. God—man—the world—the sun, the moon, the wilderness of stars—a dream, all a dream; they have no existence. Nothing exists save empty space—and you!

It ain't those parts of the Bible that I can't understand that bother me it's the parts that I do understand.

Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.

An honest politician is an oxymoron.

Man has imagined a heaven, and has left entirely out of it the supremest of all his delights...sexual intercourse!...His heaven is like himself: strange, interesting, astonishing, grotesque. I give you my word, it has not a single feature in it that he actually values.

Golf is a good walk spoiled.

Let us be thankful for the fools. But for them the rest of us could not succeed.

what is joy without sorrow? what is success without failure? what is a win without a loss? what is health without illness? you have to experience each if you are to appreciate the other. there is always going to be suffering. it’s how you look at your suffering, how you deal with it, that will define you.

It's considered good sportsmanship not to pick up lost golf balls while they are still rolling.

The easy confidence with which I know another man's religion is folly teaches me to suspect that my own is also. I would not interfere with any one's religion, either to strengthen it or to weaken it. I am not able to believe one's religion can affect his hereafter one way or the other, no matter what that religion may be. But it may easily be a great comfort to him in this life--hence it is a valuable possession to him.

When I was a boy of fourteen my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years.

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

In prayer we call ourselves 'worms of the dust' but it is only on a sort of tacit understanding that the remark shall not be taken at par.