Mark Twain

Civilization is the limitless multiplication of unnecessary necessities.

— Mark Twain

Thunder is good, thunder is impressive; but it is lightning that does the work.

— Mark Twain

Few of us can stand prosperity. Another man's, I mean.

— Mark Twain

Honesty is the best policy - when there is money in it.

— Mark Twain

Lord save us all from old age and broken health and a hope tree that has lost the faculty of putting out blossoms.

— Mark Twain

When ill luck begins, it does not come in sprinkles, but in showers.

— Mark Twain

We are all alike, on the inside.

— Mark Twain

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.

— Mark Twain

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

— Mark Twain

If you hold a cat by the tail you learn things you cannot learn any other way.

— Mark Twain

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

— Mark Twain

Grief can take care if itself, but to get the full value of a joy you must have somebody to divide it with.

— Mark Twain

The trouble ain't that there is too many fools, but that the lightning ain't distributed right.

— Mark Twain

Lord save us all from old age and broken health and a hope tree that has lost the faculty of putting out blossoms.

— Mark Twain

I've had a lot of worries in my life, most of which never happened.

— Mark Twain

Apparently there is nothing that cannot happen today.

— Mark Twain

Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company.

— Mark Twain

Everything has its limit - iron ore cannot be educated into gold.

— Mark Twain

The lack of money is the root of all evil.

— Mark Twain

When you fish for love, bait with your heart, not your brain.

— Mark Twain

It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare.

— Mark Twain

When a person cannot deceive himself the chances are against his being able to deceive other people.

— Mark Twain

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

— Mark Twain

Do the thing you fear most and the death of fear is certain.

— Mark Twain

The dog is a gentleman; I hope to go to his heaven not man's.

— Mark Twain

The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.

— Mark Twain

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

— Mark Twain

Only one thing is impossible for God: To find any sense in any copyright law on the planet.

— Mark Twain

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

— Mark Twain

We have the best government that money can buy.

— Mark Twain

Under certain circumstances, urgent circumstances, desperate circumstances, profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer.

— Mark Twain

Laws control the lesser man... Right conduct controls the greater one.

— Mark Twain

When your friends begin to flatter you on how young you look, it's a sure sign you're getting old.

— Mark Twain

In the Spring, I have counted 136 different kinds of weather inside of 24 hours.

— Mark Twain

If man could be crossed with the cat it would improve man, but deteriorate the cat.

— Mark Twain

It were not best that we should all think alike; it is difference of opinion that makes horse races.

— Mark Twain

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

— Mark Twain

The secret source of humor is not joy but sorrow; there is no humor in Heaven.

— Mark Twain

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.

— Mark Twain

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

— Mark Twain

Be careless in your dress if you must, but keep a tidy soul.

— Mark Twain

Loyalty to the Nation all the time, loyalty to the Government when it deserves it.

— Mark Twain

Humor is mankind's greatest blessing.

— Mark Twain

Necessity is the mother of taking chances.

— Mark Twain

Loyalty to the Nation all the time, loyalty to the Government when it deserves it.

— Mark Twain

Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint.

— Mark Twain

I lost Susy thirteen years ago; I lost her mother--her incomparable mother!--five and a half years ago; Clara has gone away to live in Europe and now I have lost Jean. How poor I am, who was once so rich! . . . Jean lies yonder, I sit here; we are strangers under our own roof; we kissed hands good-by at this door last night--and it was forever, we never suspecting it. She lies there, and I sit here--writing, busying myself, to keep my heart from breaking. How dazzling the sunshine is flooding the hills around! It is like a mockery. Seventy-four years ago twenty-four days. Seventy-four years old yesterday. Who can estimate my age today?

— Mark Twain

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.

— Mark Twain

The man who is a pessimist before 48 knows too much; if he is an optimist after it, he knows too little.

— Mark Twain

There is no sadder sight than a young pessimist.

— Mark Twain

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

— Mark Twain

Nothing so needs reforming as other people's habits.

— Mark Twain

India has 2,000,000 gods and worships them all. In religion, all other countries are paupers; India is the only millionaire.

— Mark Twain

The human race is a race of cowards; and I am not only marching in that procession but carrying a banner.

— Mark Twain

Man will do many things to get himself loved, he will do all things to get himself envied.

— Mark Twain

A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval.

— Mark Twain

Sometimes too much to drink is barely enough.

— Mark Twain

There are times when one would like to hang the whole human race, and finish the farce.

— Mark Twain

Cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education.

— Mark Twain

To be good is noble; but to show others how to be good is nobler and no trouble.

— Mark Twain

All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence, and then success is sure.

— Mark Twain

Good breeding consists in concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of the other person.

— Mark Twain

The secret of getting ahead is getting started.

— Mark Twain

Honesty is the best policy - when there is money in it.

— Mark Twain

There are people who can do all fine and heroic things but one - keep from telling their happiness to the unhappy.

— Mark Twain

All emotion is involuntary when genuine.

— Mark Twain

It is my belief that nearly any invented quotation, played with confidence, stands a good chance to deceive.

— Mark Twain

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.

— Mark Twain

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

— Mark Twain

I have never taken any exercise, except sleeping and resting, and I never intend to take any.

— Mark Twain

Why is it that we rejoice at a birth and grieve at a funeral? It is because we are not the person involved.

— Mark Twain

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.

— Mark Twain

Drag your thoughts away from your troubles... by the ears, by the heels, or any other way you can manage it.

— Mark Twain

The educated Southerner has no use for an 'r', except at the beginning of a word.

— Mark Twain

The more things are forbidden, the more popular they become.

— Mark Twain

I haven't a particle of confidence in a man who has no redeeming petty vices whatsoever.

— Mark Twain

All generalizations are false, including this one.

— Mark Twain

There are several good protections against temptation, but the surest is cowardice.

— Mark Twain

I'll risk forty dollars that he can outjump any frog in Calaveras county.

— Mark Twain

It is just like man's vanity and impertinence to call an animal dumb because it is dumb to his dull perceptions.

— Mark Twain

I don't see no p'ints about that frog that's any better'n any other frog.

— Mark Twain

When angry, count to four; when very angry, swear.

— Mark Twain

He was ignorant of the commonest accomplishments of youth. He could not even lie.

— Mark Twain

Do not tell fish stories where the people know you; but particularly, don't tell them where they know the fish.

— Mark Twain

I have seen Chinamen abused and maltreated in all the mean, cowardly ways possible to the invention of a degraded nature, but I never saw a policeman interfere in the matter and I never saw a Chinaman righted in a court of justice for wrongs thus done him.

— Mark Twain

Golf is a good walk spoiled.

— Mark Twain

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

— Mark Twain

I never let schooling interfere with my education.

— Mark Twain

Soap and education are not as sudden as a massacre, but they are more deadly in the long run.

— Mark Twain

It were not best that we should all think alike; it is difference of opinion that makes horse races.

— Mark Twain

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

— Mark Twain

When people do not respect us we are sharply offended; yet in his private heart no man much respects himself.

— Mark Twain

Education consists mainly of what we have unlearned.

— Mark Twain

Tomorrow night I appear for the first time before a Boston audience — 4000 critics.

— Mark Twain

We have the best government that money can buy.

— Mark Twain

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

— Mark Twain

A man's character may be learned from the adjectives which he habitually uses in conversation.

— Mark Twain

He is now fast rising from affluence to poverty.

— Mark Twain

George Washington, as a boy, was ignorant of the commonest accomplishments of youth. He could not even lie.

— Mark Twain

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

— Mark Twain

The wit knows that his place is at the tail of a procession.

— Mark Twain

Formerly, if you killed a man, it was possible that you were insane—but now, if you, having friends and money, kill a man, it is evidence that you are a lunatic.

— Mark Twain

He is now rising from affluence to poverty.

— Mark Twain

Is not this insanity plea becoming rather common? Is it not so common that the reader confidently expects to see it offered in every criminal case that comes before the courts? [...] Really, what we want now, is not laws against crime, but a law against insanity.

— Mark Twain

Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please.

— Mark Twain

One of the most striking differences between a cat and a lie is that a cat has only nine lives.

— Mark Twain

Benjamin Franklin did a great many notable things for his country, and made her young name to be honored in many lands as the mother of such a son. It is not the idea of this memoir to ignore that or cover it up. No; the simple idea of it is to snub those pretentious maxims of his, which he worked up with a great show of originality out of truisms that had become wearisome platitudes as early as the dispersion from Babel.

— Mark Twain

Prophesy is a good line of business, but it is full of risks.

— Mark Twain

This poor little one-horse town.

— Mark Twain

There isn't time, so brief is life, for bickerings, apologies, heartburnings, callings to account. There is only time for loving, and but an instant, so to speak, for that.

— Mark Twain

Let us not be too particular; it is better to have old secondhand diamonds than none at all.

— Mark Twain

It is my belief that nearly any invented quotation, played with confidence, stands a good chance to deceive.

— Mark Twain

A baby is an inestimable blessing and bother.

— Mark Twain

Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond; cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education.

— Mark Twain

Life would be infinitely happier if we could only be born at the age of eighty and gradually approach eighteen.

— Mark Twain

The funniest things are the forbidden.

— Mark Twain

Truth is the most valuable thing we have. Let us economize it.

— Mark Twain

We haven't all had the good fortune to be ladies; we haven't all been generals, or poets, or statesmen; but when the toast works down to the babies, we stand on common ground.

— Mark Twain

Better a broken promise than none at all.

— Mark Twain

Among the three or four million cradles now rocking in the land are some which this nation would preserve for ages as sacred things, if we could know which ones they are.

— Mark Twain

Familiarity breeds contempt - and children.

— Mark Twain

Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.

— Mark Twain

Soap and education are not as sudden as a massacre, but they are more deadly in the long run.

— Mark Twain

Be respectful to your superiors, if you have any.

— Mark Twain

The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them.

— Mark Twain

When the doctrine of allegiance to party can utterly up-end a man's moral constitution and make a temporary fool of him besides, what excuse are you going to offer for preaching it, teaching it, extending it, perpetuating it? Shall you say, the best good of the country demands allegiance to party? Shall you also say it demands that a man kick his truth and his conscience into the gutter, and become a mouthing lunatic, besides?

— Mark Twain

Education consists mainly of what we have unlearned.

— Mark Twain

Loyalty to petrified opinions never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul in this world — and never will.

— Mark Twain

The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them.

— Mark Twain

It was wonderful to find America, but it would have been more wonderful to miss it.

— Mark Twain

He [George Washington Cable] has taught me to abhor and detest the Sabbath day and hunt up new and troublesome ways to dishonor it.

— Mark Twain

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.

— Mark Twain

Soap and education are not as sudden as a massacre, but they are more deadly in the long run.

— Mark Twain

As I slowly grow wise I briskly grow cautious.

— Mark Twain

Man is the only animal that blushes - or needs to.

— Mark Twain

A circle is a round straight line with a hole in the middle.

— Mark Twain

I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it.

— Mark Twain

All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence, and then Success is sure.

— Mark Twain

To refuse awards is another way of accepting them with more noise than is normal.

— Mark Twain

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.

— Mark Twain

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

— Mark Twain

A round man cannot be expected to fit in a square hole right away. He must have time to modify his shape.

— Mark Twain

Weather is a literary specialty, and no untrained hand can turn out a good article on it.

— Mark Twain

I have never taken any exercise, except sleeping and resting, and I never intend to take any.

— Mark Twain

My books are like water; those of the great geniuses are wine. (Fortunately) everybody drinks water.

— Mark Twain

I must have a prodigious quantity of mind; it takes me as much as a week sometimes to make it up.

— Mark Twain

Thousands of geniuses live and die undiscovered - either by themselves or by others.

— Mark Twain

Prophesy is a good line of business, but it is full of risks.

— Mark Twain

I am opposed to millionaires, but it would be dangerous to offer me the position.

— Mark Twain

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

— Mark Twain

No sinner is ever saved after the first twenty minutes of a sermon.

— Mark Twain

If you tell the truth you don't have to remember anything.

— Mark Twain

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

— Mark Twain

James Ross Clemens, a cousin of mine, was seriously ill two or three weeks ago in London, but is well now. The report of my illness grew out of his illness; the report of my death was an exaggeration.

— Mark Twain

Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company.

— Mark Twain

When I was younger I could remember anything, whether it happened or not.

— Mark Twain

A round man cannot be expected to fit in a square hole right away. He must have time to modify his shape.

— Mark Twain

I must have a prodigious quantity of mind; it takes me as much as a week sometimes to make it up.

— Mark Twain

A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way.

— Mark Twain

[Citing a familiar "American joke":] In Boston they ask, How much does he know? In New York, How much is he worth? In Philadelphia, Who were his parents?

— Mark Twain

I have been complimented many times and they always embarrass me; I always feel that they have not said enough.

— Mark Twain

Humor is the great thing, the saving thing. The minute it crops up, all our hardnesses yield, all our irritations and resentments flit away and a sunny spirit takes their place.

— Mark Twain

How lucky Adam was. He knew when he said a good thing, nobody had said it before.

— Mark Twain

Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please.

— Mark Twain

There are people who can do all fine and heroic things but one - keep from telling their happiness to the unhappy.

— Mark Twain

Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don't mind, it doesn't matter.

— Mark Twain

A person who won't read has no advantage over one who can't read.

— Mark Twain

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.

— Mark Twain

A man is never more truthful than when he acknowledges himself a liar.

— Mark Twain

'Classic.' A book which people praise and don't read.

— Mark Twain

He had only one vanity; he thought he could give advice better than any other person.

— Mark Twain

Why shouldn't truth be stranger than fiction? Fiction, after all, has to make sense.

— Mark Twain

There is nothing in the world like a persuasive speech to fuddle the mental apparatus and upset the convictions and debauch the emotions of an audience not practised in the tricks and delusions of oratory.

— Mark Twain

Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.

— Mark Twain

By trying we can easily learn to endure adversity. Another man's, I mean.

— Mark Twain

Definition of a classic — something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.

— Mark Twain

What, sir, would the people of the earth be without woman? They would be scarce, sir, almighty scarce.

— Mark Twain

It usually takes me more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech.

— Mark Twain

We believe that out of the public school grows the greatness of a nation.

— Mark Twain

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

— Mark Twain

Name the greatest of all inventors. Accident.

— Mark Twain

The silent colossal National Lie that is the support and confederate of all the tyrannies and shams and inequalities and unfairnesses that afflict the peoples — that is the one to throw bricks and sermons at.

— Mark Twain

Lord save us all from old age and broken health and a hope tree that has lost the faculty of putting out blossoms.

— Mark Twain

Your race, in its poverty, has unquestionably one really effective weapon—laughter. Power, Money, Persuasion, Supplication, Persecution—these can lift at a colossal humbug,—push it a little—crowd it a little—weaken it a little, century by century: but only Laughter can blow it to rags and atoms at a blast. Against the assault of Laughter nothing can stand.

— Mark Twain

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.

— Mark Twain

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

— Mark Twain

Whose property is my body? Probably mine. I so regard it. If I experiment with it, who must be answerable? I, not the State. If I choose injudiciously, does the State die? Oh no.

— Mark Twain

Only one thing is impossible for God: To find any sense in any copyright law on the planet.

— Mark Twain

Work is a necessary evil to be avoided.

— Mark Twain

...[H]eaven for climate, Hell for society.

— Mark Twain

I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did. I said I didn't know.

— Mark Twain

Honesty is the best policy — when there is money in it.

— Mark Twain

Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.

— Mark Twain

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.

— Mark Twain

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.

— Mark Twain

Now what I contend is that my body is my own, at least I have always so regarded it. If I do harm through my experimenting with it, it is I who suffer, not the state.

— Mark Twain

The finest clothing made is a person's own skin, but, of course, society demands something more than this.

— Mark Twain

Always do right. This will gratify some people, and astonish the rest.

— Mark Twain

Laws control the lesser man... Right conduct controls the greater one.

— Mark Twain

God made the Idiot for practice, and then He made the School Board.

— Mark Twain

To create man was a fine and original idea; but to add the sheep was a tautology.

— Mark Twain

Words are only painted fire; a look is the fire itself.

— Mark Twain

Man has been here 32,000 years. That it took a hundred million years to prepare the world for him is proof that that is what it was done for. I suppose it is, I dunno. If the Eiffel Tower were now representing the world's age, the skin of paint on the pinnacle-knob at its summit would represent man's share of that age; and anybody would perceive that the skin was what the tower was built for. I reckon they would, I dunno.

— Mark Twain

Biographies are but the clothes and buttons of the man. The biography of the man himself cannot be written.

— Mark Twain

To put it in rude, plain, unpalatable words — true patriotism, real patriotism: loyalty not to a Family and a Fiction, but a loyalty to the Nation itself!..."Remember this, take this to heart, live by it, die for it if necessary: that our patriotism is medieval, outworn, obsolete; that the modern patriotism, the true patriotism, the only rational patriotism, is loyalty to the Nation ALL the time, loyalty to the Government when it deserves it." [Czar Nicholas II]

— Mark Twain

Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn't.

— Mark Twain

He is a stranger to me, but he is a most remarkable man — and I am the other one. Between us, we cover all knowledge; he knows all that can be known, and I know the rest.

— Mark Twain

The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.

— Mark Twain

The Christian's Bible is a drug store. Its contents remain the same, but the medical practice changes.

— Mark Twain

The only reason why God created man is because he was disappointed with the monkey.

— Mark Twain

When a person cannot deceive himself the chances are against his being able to deceive other people.

— Mark Twain

A powerful agent is the right word. Whenever we come upon one of those intensely right words in a book or a newspaper the resulting effect is physical as well as spiritual, and electrically prompt.

— Mark Twain

Only one thing is impossible for God: To find any sense in any copyright law on the planet.

— Mark Twain

What is the difference between a taxidermist and a tax collector? The taxidermist takes only your skin.

— Mark Twain

Customs do not concern themselves with right or wrong or reason. But they have to be obeyed; one reasons all around them until he is tired, but he must not transgress them, it is sternly forbidden.

— Mark Twain

Let us make a special effort to stop communicating with each other, so we can have some conversation.

— Mark Twain

Laws are sand, customs are rock. Laws can be evaded and punishment escaped, but an openly transgressed custom brings sure punishment.

— Mark Twain

It is my belief that nearly any invented quotation, played with confidence, stands a good chance to deceive.

— Mark Twain

We Americans... bear the ark of liberties of the world.

— Mark Twain

I have been complimented many times and they always embarrass me; I always feel that they have not said enough.

— Mark Twain

The secret of getting ahead is getting started.

— Mark Twain

I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.

— Mark Twain

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.

— Mark Twain

Thunder is good, thunder is impressive; but it is lightning that does the work.

— Mark Twain

Ideally a book would have no order to it, and the reader would have to discover his own.

— Mark Twain

When even the brightest mind in our world has been trained up from childhood in a superstition of any kind, it will never be possible for that mind, in its maturity, to examine sincerely, dispassionately, and conscientiously any evidence or any circumstance which shall seem to cast a doubt upon the validity of that superstition. I doubt if I could do it myself.

— Mark Twain

Water, taken in moderation, cannot hurt anybody.

— Mark Twain

Adam's temperament was the first command the Deity ever issued to a human being on this planet. And it was the only command Adam would never be able to disobey. It said, "Be weak, be water, be characterless, be cheaply persuadable." The later command, to let the fruit alone, was certain to be disobeyed. Not by Adam himself, but by his temperament — which he did not create and had no authority over.

— Mark Twain

It is easier to stay out than get out.

— Mark Twain

The easy confidence with which I know another man's religion is folly teaches me to suspect that my own is also.

— Mark Twain

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

— Mark Twain

The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.

— Mark Twain

Optimist: day dreamer more elegantly spelled.

— Mark Twain

You tell me whar a man gits his corn pone, en I'll tell you what his 'pinions is.

— Mark Twain

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.

— Mark Twain

We all do no end of feeling, and we mistake it for thinking. And out of it we get an aggregation which we consider a boon. Its name is public opinion. It is held in reverence. Some think it the voice of God.

— Mark Twain

Martyrdom covers a multitude of sins.

— Mark Twain

Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.

— Mark Twain

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

— Mark Twain

Always acknowledge a fault frankly. This will throw those in authority off their guard and give you opportunity to commit more.

— Mark Twain

The public is the only critic whose opinion is worth anything at all.

— Mark Twain

Humor must not professedly teach, and it must not professedly preach, but it must do both if it would live forever. By forever, I mean thirty years.

— Mark Twain

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

— Mark Twain

The first of April is the day we remember what we are the other 364 days of the year.

— Mark Twain

It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.

— Mark Twain

A critic never made or killed a book or a play. The people themselves are the final judges. It is their opinion that counts. After all, the final test is truth. But the trouble is that most writers regard truth as their most valuable possession and therefore are most economical in its use.

— Mark Twain

Humor must not professedly teach and it must not professedly preach, but it must do both if it would live forever.

— Mark Twain

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

— Mark Twain

It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world, and moral courage so rare.

— Mark Twain

I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.

— Mark Twain

Repartee is something we think of twenty-four hours too late.

— Mark Twain

It is not worth while to try to keep history from repeating itself, for man's character will always make the preventing of the repetitions impossible.

— Mark Twain

It is better to take what does not belong to you than to let it lie around neglected.

— Mark Twain

Jesus died to save men — a small thing for an immortal to do, & didn't save many, anyway; but if he had been damned for the race that would have been act of a size proper to a god, & would have saved the whole race. However, why should anybody want to save the human race, or damn it either? Does God want its society? Does Satan?

— Mark Twain

Prosperity is the best protector of principle.

— Mark Twain

Don't let schooling interfere with your education.

— Mark Twain

A man is never more truthful than when he acknowledges himself a liar.

— Mark Twain

The most interesting information comes from children, for they tell all they know and then stop.

— Mark Twain

Adam, at Eve's grave: Wheresoever she was, THERE was Eden.

— Mark Twain

I make it a rule never to smoke while I'm sleeping.

— Mark Twain

Principles have no real force except when one is well-fed.

— Mark Twain

The Public is merely a multiplied 'me.'

— Mark Twain

An injurious lie is an uncommendable thing; and so, also, and in the same degree, is an injurious truth—a fact that is recognized by the law of libel.

— Mark Twain

All generalizations are false, including this one.

— Mark Twain

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

— Mark Twain

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

— Mark Twain

The highest perfection of politeness is only a beautiful edifice, built, from the base to the dome, of ungraceful and gilded forms of charitable and unselfish lying.

— Mark Twain

Compliments make me vain: & when I am vain, I am insolent & overbearing. It is a pity, too, because I love compliments. I love them even when they are not so. My child, I can live on a good compliment two weeks with nothing else to eat.

— Mark Twain

Man is a Religious Animal. He is the only Religious Animal. He is the only animal that has the True Religion — several of them. He is the only animal that loves his neighbor as himself and cuts his throat if his theology isn't straight.

— Mark Twain

My mother had a great deal of trouble with me, but I think she enjoyed it.

— Mark Twain

I must have a prodigious quantity of mind; it takes me as much as a week sometimes to make it up.

— Mark Twain

They spell it "Vinci" and pronounce it "Vinchy". Foreigners always spell better than they pronounce.

— Mark Twain

I used to worship the mighty genius of Michael Angelo — that man who was great in poetry, painting, sculpture, architecture — great in every thing he undertook. But I do not want Michael Angelo for breakfast — for luncheon — for dinner — for tea — for supper — for between meals. I like a change, occasionally.

— Mark Twain

Honesty is the best policy - when there is money in it.

— Mark Twain

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

— Mark Twain

Enough, enough, enough! Say no more! Lump the whole thing! say that the Creator made Italy from designs by Michael Angelo!

— Mark Twain

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.

— Mark Twain

Life would be infinitely happier if we could only be born at the age of eighty and gradually approach eighteen.

— Mark Twain

Guides cannot master the subtleties of the American joke.

— Mark Twain

I wish Europe would let Russia annihilate Turkey a little--not much, but enough to make it difficult to find the place again without a divining-rod or a diving-bell.

— Mark Twain

Virtue never has been as respectable as money.

— Mark Twain

Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please.

— Mark Twain

Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.

— Mark Twain

The Erie railroad kills 23 to 46; the other 845 railroads kill an average of one-third of a man each; and the rest of that million, amounting in the aggregate to that appalling figure of 987,631 corpses, die naturally in their beds! You will excuse me from taking any more chances on those beds. The railroads are good enough for me.

— Mark Twain

No California gentleman or lady ever abuses or oppresses a Chinaman, under any circumstances, an explanation that seems to be much needed in the east. Only the scum of the population do it; they and their children. They, and, naturally and consistently, the policemen and politicians, likewise, for these are the dust-licking pimps and slaves of the scum, there as well as elsewhere in America.

— Mark Twain

Tom appeared on the sidewalk with a bucket of whitewash and a long-handled brush. He surveyed the fence, and all gladness left him and a deep melancholy settled down upon his spirit. Thirty yards of board fence nine feet high. Life to him seemed hollow, and existence but a burden.

— Mark Twain

He had discovered a great law of human action, without knowing it — namely, that in order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to obtain.

— Mark Twain

Words are only painted fire; a look is the fire itself.

— Mark Twain

Work consists of whatever a body is OBLIGED to do, and...Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.

— Mark Twain

The minister gave out his text and droned along monotonously through an argument that was so prosy that many a head by and by began to nod — and yet it was an argument that dealt in limitless fire and brimstone and thinned the predestined elect down to a company so small as to be hardly worth the saving.

— Mark Twain

There was no getting around the stubborn fact that taking sweetmeats was only "hooking," while taking bacon and hams and such valuables was plain simple stealing — and there was a command against that in the Bible. So they inwardly resolved that so long as they remained in the business, their piracies should not again be sullied with the crime of stealing.

— Mark Twain

To promise not to do a thing is the surest way in the world to make a body want to go and do that very thing.

— Mark Twain

There is a sumptuous variety about the New England weather that compels the stranger's admiration — and regret. The weather is always doing something there; always attending strictly to business; always getting up new designs and trying them on people to see how they will go. But it gets through more business in spring than in any other season. In the spring I have counted one hundred and thirty-six different kinds of weather inside of twenty-four hours.

— Mark Twain

Probable nor'east to sou'west winds, varying to the soutard and westard and eastard and points between; high and low barometer, sweeping round from place to place; probable areas of rain, snow, hail, and drought, succeeded or preceded by earthquakes with thunder and lightning.

— Mark Twain

One of the brightest gems in the New England weather is the dazzling uncertainty of it.

— Mark Twain

That's just the way: a person does a low-down thing, and then he don't want to take no consequences of it. Thinks as long as he can hide it, it ain't no disgrace.

— Mark Twain

A gifted person ought to learn English (barring spelling and pronouncing) in thirty hours, French in thirty days, and German in thirty years.

— Mark Twain

We have not the reverent feeling for the rainbow that the savage has, because we know how it is made. We have lost as much as we gained by prying into that matter.

— Mark Twain

You may say a cat uses good grammar. Well, a cat does -- but you let a cat get excited once; you let a cat get to pulling fur with another cat on a shed, nights, and you'll hear grammar that will give you the lockjaw. Ignorant people think it's the noise which fighting cats make that is so aggravating, but it ain't so; it's the sickening grammar they use.

— Mark Twain

Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.BY ORDER OF THE AUTHOR.

— Mark Twain

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.

— Mark Twain

You don't know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain't no matter. That book was made by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly. There was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth.

— Mark Twain

The best way to cheer yourself up is to try to cheer somebody else up.

— Mark Twain

Jim was most ruined for a servant, because he got stuck up on account of having seen the devil and been rode by witches.

— Mark Twain

The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.

— Mark Twain

We catched fish and talked, and we took a swim now and then to keep off sleepiness. It was kind of solemn, drifting down the big, still river, laying on our backs looking up at the stars, and we didn't ever feel like talking loud, and it warn't often that we laughed, only a little kind of a low chuckle. We had mighty good weather as a general thing, and nothing ever happened to us at all, that night, nor the next, nor the next.

— Mark Twain

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.

— Mark Twain

Wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been.

— Mark Twain

Pilgrim's Progress, about a man that left his family, it didn't say why. I read considerable in it now and then. The statements was interesting, but tough.

— Mark Twain

There warn't anybody at the church, except maybe a hog or two, for there warn't any lock on the door, and hogs likes a puncheon floor in summer-time because it's cool. If you notice, most folks don't go to church only when they've got to; but a hog is different.

— Mark Twain

We said there warn't no home like a raft, after all. Other places do seem so cramped up and smothery, but a raft don't. You feel mighty free and easy and comfortable on a raft.

— Mark Twain

To be, or not to be; that is the bare bodkin.

— Mark Twain

Everybody yelled at him, and laughed at him, and sassed him, and he sassed back, and said he'd attend to them and lay them out in their regular turns, but he couldn't wait now, because he'd come to town to kill old Colonel Sherburn, and his motto was, "Meat first, and spoon vittles to top off on."

— Mark Twain

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

— Mark Twain

H'aint we got all the fools in town on our side? And ain't that a big enough majority in any town?

— Mark Twain

A God who could make good children as easily a bad, yet preferred to make bad ones; who could have made every one of them happy, yet never made a single happy one; who made them prize their bitter life, yet stingily cut it short; who gave his angels eternal happiness unearned, yet required his other children to earn it; who gave is angels painless lives, yet cursed his other children with biting miseries and maladies of mind and body; who mouths justice, and invented hell--mouths mercy, and invented hell--mouths Golden Rules and forgiveness multiplied by seventy times seven, and invented hell; who mouths morals to other people, and has none himself; who frowns upon crimes, yet commits them all; who created man without invitation, then tries to shuffle the responsibility for man's acts upon man, instead of honorably placing it where it belongs, upon himself; and finally, with altogether divine obtuseness, invites his poor abused slave to worship him!

— Mark Twain

I was a-trembling, because I'd got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself, "All right, then, I'll GO to hell."

— Mark Twain

So there ain't nothing more to write about, and I am rotten glad of it, because if I'd a knowed what a trouble it was to make a book I wouldn't a tackled it and aint't agoing to no more. But I reckon I got to light out for the Territory ahead of the rest, because Aunt Sally she's going to adopt me and sivilize me and I can't stand it. I been there before.

— Mark Twain

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

— Mark Twain

Whenever the literary German dives into a sentence, that is the last you are going to see of him till he emerges on the other side of his Atlantic with his verb in his mouth.

— Mark Twain

It is a mystery that is hidden from me by reason that the emergency requiring the fathoming of it hath not in my life-days occurred, and so, not having no need to know this thing, I abide barren of the knowledge.

— Mark Twain

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

— Mark Twain

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

— Mark Twain

The humorous story is told gravely; the teller does his best to conceal the fact that he even dimly suspects that there is anything funny about it.

— Mark Twain

Any emotion, if it is sincere, is involuntary.

— Mark Twain

To string incongruities and absurdities together in a wandering and sometimes purposeless way, and seem innocently unaware that they are absurdities, is the basis of the American art, if my position is correct.

— Mark Twain

These wisdoms are for the luring of youth toward high moral altitudes. The author did not gather them from practice, but from observation. To be good is noble; but to show others how to be good is nobler and no trouble.

— Mark Twain

When in doubt, tell the truth.

— Mark Twain

Prosperity is the best protector of principle.

— Mark Twain

It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.

— Mark Twain

It is more trouble to make a maxim than it is to do right.

— Mark Twain

It usually takes me more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech.

— Mark Twain

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

— Mark Twain

Noise proves nothing. Often a hen who has merely laid an egg cackles as if she had laid an asteroid.

— Mark Twain

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.

— Mark Twain

Truth is the most valuable thing we have. Let us economize it.

— Mark Twain

The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.

— Mark Twain

Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don't mind, it doesn't matter.

— Mark Twain

It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress.

— Mark Twain

The secret of getting ahead is getting started.

— Mark Twain

There are those who scoff at the schoolboy, calling him frivolous and shallow: Yet it was the schoolboy who said "Faith is believing what you know ain't so."

— Mark Twain

Principles have no real force except when one is well-fed.

— Mark Twain

Truth is stranger than fiction — to some people, but I am measurably familiar with it.

— Mark Twain

There are several good protections against temptation, but the surest is cowardice.

— Mark Twain

All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence, and then success is sure.

— Mark Twain

Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't.

— Mark Twain

A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way.

— Mark Twain

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.

— Mark Twain

When you fish for love, bait with your heart, not your brain.

— Mark Twain

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

— Mark Twain

Man will do many things to get himself loved; he will do all things to get himself envied.

— Mark Twain

Do the right thing. It will gratify some people and astonish the rest.

— Mark Twain

"Classic." A book which people praise and don't read.

— Mark Twain

Wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been.

— Mark Twain

Man is the Only Animal that Blushes. Or needs to.

— Mark Twain

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

— Mark Twain

Nearly all black and brown skins are beautiful, but a beautiful white skin is rare.

— Mark Twain

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.

— Mark Twain

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.

— Mark Twain

Prosperity is the best protector of principle.

— Mark Twain

Never put off till tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow.

— Mark Twain

It is wonderful, the power of a faith like that, that can make multitudes upon multitudes of the old and weak and the young and frail enter without hesitation or complaint upon such incredible journeys and endure the resultant miseries without repining. It is done in love, or it is done in fear; I do not know which it is. No matter what the impulse is, the act born of it is beyond imagination marvelous to our kind of people, the cold whites.

— Mark Twain

Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't.

— Mark Twain

By trying we can easily learn to endure adversity. Another man's, I mean.

— Mark Twain

Buy land, they're not making it anymore.

— Mark Twain

Grief can take care of itself, but to get the full value of a joy you must have somebody to divide it with.

— Mark Twain

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

— Mark Twain

So far as I am able to judge, nothing has been left undone, either by man or Nature, to make India the most extraordinary country that the sun visits on his round. Nothing seems to have been forgotten, nothing overlooked.

— Mark Twain

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

— Mark Twain

Don't part with your illusions. When they are gone you may still exist but you have ceased to live.

— Mark Twain

When in doubt tell the truth.

— Mark Twain

Often, the surest way to convey misinformation is to tell the strict truth.

— Mark Twain

Golf is a good walk spoiled.

— Mark Twain

Every one is a moon, and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody.

— Mark Twain

Action speaks louder than words but not nearly as often.

— Mark Twain

Nothing that grieves us can be called little: by the eternal laws of proportion a child's loss of a doll and a king's loss of a crown are events of the same size.

— Mark Twain

Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.

— Mark Twain

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.

— Mark Twain

I have no color prejudices nor caste prejudices nor creed prejudices. All I care to know is that a man is a human being, and that is enough for me; he can't be any worse.

— Mark Twain

Denial ain't just a river in Egypt.

— Mark Twain

The Jew is not a disturber of the peace of any country. Even his enemies will concede that. He is not a loafer, he is not a sot, he is not noisy, he is not a brawler nor a rioter, he is not quarrelsome. In the statistics of crime his presence is conspicuously rare — in all countries. With murder and other crimes of violence he has but little to do: he is a stranger to the hangman. In the police court's daily long roll of "assaults" and "drunk and disorderlies" his name seldom appears ...

— Mark Twain

Cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education.

— Mark Twain

A Jewish beggar is not impossible, perhaps; such a thing may exist, but there are few men that can say they have seen that spectacle.

— Mark Twain

Humor must not professedly teach and it must not professedly preach, but it must do both if it would live forever.

— Mark Twain

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

— Mark Twain

These facts are all on the credit side of the proposition that the Jew is a good and orderly citizen. Summed up, they certify that he is quiet, peaceable, industrious, unaddicted to high crimes and brutal dispositions; that his family life is commendable; that he is not a burden upon public charities; that he is not a beggar; that in benevolence he is above the reach of competition. These are the very quintessentials of good citizenship.

— Mark Twain

Thunder is good, thunder is impressive; but it is lightning that does the work.

— Mark Twain

In the cotton States, after the war...the Jew came down in force, set up shop on the plantation, supplied all the negro's wants on credit, and at the end of the season was proprietor of the negro's share of the present crop and of part of his share of the next one. Before long, the whites detested the Jew, and it is doubtful if the negro loved him.

— Mark Twain

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

— Mark Twain

My mother had a great deal of trouble with me, but I think she enjoyed it.

— Mark Twain

I am persuaded that in Russia, Austria, and Germany nine-tenths of the hostility to the Jew comes from the average Christian's inability to compete successfully with the average Jew in business--in either straight business or the questionable sort.

— Mark Twain

Everything human is pathetic. The secret source of humor itself is not joy but sorrow. There is no humor in heaven.

— Mark Twain

The lack of money is the root of all evil.

— Mark Twain

Ages of restriction to the one tool which the law was not able to take from him--his brain--have made that tool singularly competent...

— Mark Twain

All generalizations are false, including this one.

— Mark Twain

In estimating worldly values the Jew is not shallow, but deep. With precocious wisdom he found out in the morning of time that some men worship rank, some worship heroes, some worship power, some worship God, and that over these ideals they dispute and cannot unite--but that they all worship money; so he made it the end and aim of his life to get it. The cost to him has been heavy; his success has made the whole human race his enemy...

— Mark Twain

To be good is noble; but to show others how to be good is nobler and no trouble.

— Mark Twain

Loyalty to petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul.

— Mark Twain

Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond; cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education.

— Mark Twain

The best of us would rather be popular than right.

— Mark Twain

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

— Mark Twain

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

— Mark Twain

Lord save us all from old age and broken health and a hope tree that has lost the faculty of putting out blossoms.

— Mark Twain

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.

— Mark Twain

As an active privilege, [free speech] ranks with the privilege of committing murder: we may exercise it if we are willing to take the consequences. Murder is forbidden both in form and in fact; free speech is granted in form but forbidden in fact. By the common estimate both are crimes, and are held in deep odium by all civilized peoples. Murder is sometimes punished, free speech always.

— Mark Twain

If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything.

— Mark Twain

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

— Mark Twain

An unpopular opinion concerning politics or religion lies concealed in the breast of every man; in many cases not only one sample, but several. The more intelligent the man, the larger the freightage of this kind of opinions he carries, and keeps to himself.

— Mark Twain

If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything.

— Mark Twain

“[W]e consciously or unconsciously pay more attention to tuning our opinions to our neighbor’s pitch and preserving his approval than we do to examining the opinions searchingly and seeing to it that they are right and sound.

— Mark Twain

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

— Mark Twain

He says every man is a moon and has a side which he turns toward nobody: you have to slip around behind if you want to see it.

— Mark Twain

Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please.

— Mark Twain

It is just like man's vanity and impertinence to call an animal dumb because it is dumb to his dull perceptions.

— Mark Twain

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.

— Mark Twain

It may be called the Master Passion—the hunger for Self-Approval.

— Mark Twain

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

— Mark Twain

Suppose you were an idiot, and suppose you were a member of Congress; but I repeat myself.

— Mark Twain

Necessity is the mother of taking chances.

— Mark Twain

The fact that man knows right from wrong proves his intellectual superiority to the other creatures; but the fact that he can do wrong proves his moral inferiority to any creature that cannot.

— Mark Twain

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

— Mark Twain

The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.

— Mark Twain

But the truth is, that when a Library expels a book of mine and leaves an unexpurgated Bible lying around where unprotected youth and age can get hold of it, the deep unconscious irony of it delights me and doesn't anger me.

— Mark Twain

Never pick a fight with people who buy ink by the barrel.

— Mark Twain

Citizenship? We have none! In place of it we teach patriotism which Samuel Johnson said a hundred and forty or a hundred and fifty years ago was the last refuge of the scoundrel -- and I believe that he was right. I remember when I was a boy and I heard repeated time and time again the phrase, 'My country, right or wrong, my country!' How absolutely absurd is such an idea. How absolutely absurd to teach this idea to the youth of the country.

— Mark Twain

Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company.

— Mark Twain

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."

— Mark Twain

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

— Mark Twain

Only laughter can blow [a colossal humbug] to rags and atoms at a blast. Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand.

— Mark Twain

The best way to cheer yourself up is to try to cheer somebody else up.

— Mark Twain

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.

— Mark Twain

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.

— Mark Twain

I can live for two months on a good compliment.

— Mark Twain

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

— Mark Twain

The bicycle had what is called the 'wabbles', and had them very badly. In order to keep my position, a good many things were required of me, and in every instance the thing required was against nature. Against nature, but not against the laws of nature.

— Mark Twain

Man was made at the end of the week's work, when God was tired.

— Mark Twain

There is no distinctly American criminal class - except Congress.

— Mark Twain

Try as you may, you don't get down as you would from a horse, you get down as you would from a house afire. You make a spectacle of yourself every time.

— Mark Twain

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

— Mark Twain

The self-taught man seldom knows anything accurately, and he does not know a tenth as much as he could have known if he had worked under teachers;

— Mark Twain

Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.

— Mark Twain

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

— Mark Twain

There are those who imagine that the unlucky accidents of life—life's "experiences"—are in some way useful to us. I wish I could find out how. I never know one of them to happen twice. They always change off and swap around and catch you on your inexperienced side.

— Mark Twain

We have the best government that money can buy.

— Mark Twain

Before taking final leave of me, my instructor inquired concerning my physical strength, and I was able to inform him that I hadn't any.

— Mark Twain

Do the thing you fear most and the death of fear is certain.

— Mark Twain

I started out alone to seek adventures. You don't really have to seek them—that is nothing but a phrase—they come to you.

— Mark Twain

Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.

— Mark Twain

I have seen it stated that no expert is quick enough to run over a dog; that a dog is always able to skip out of his way. I think that that may be true; but I think that the reason he couldn't run over the dog was because he was trying to. I did not try to run over any dog. But I ran over every dog that came along.

— Mark Twain

The right word may be effective, but no word was ever as effective as a rightly timed pause.

— Mark Twain

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

— Mark Twain

Get a bicycle. You will not regret it, if you live.

— Mark Twain

I don't like to commit myself about heaven and hell - you see, I have friends in both places.

— Mark Twain

We began to stir against slavery. Hearts grew soft, here, there, and yonder. There was no place in the land where the seeker could not find some small budding sign of pity for the slave. No place in all the land but one—the pulpit. It yielded at last; it always does. It fought a strong and stubborn fight, and then did what it always does, joined the procession—at the tail end. Slavery fell. The slavery text remained; the practice changed, that was all.

— Mark Twain

Life would be infinitely happier if we could only be born at the age of eighty and gradually approach eighteen.

— Mark Twain

I never let schooling interfere with my education.

— Mark Twain

Biographies are but clothes and buttons of the man — the biography of the man himself cannot be written.

— Mark Twain

The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.

— Mark Twain

A man's character may be learned from the adjectives which he habitually uses in conversation.

— Mark Twain

I thoroughly disapprove of duels. I consider them unwise and I know they are dangerous. Also, sinful. If a man should challenge me now I would go to that man and take him kindly and forgivingly by the hand and lead him to a quiet retired spot and kill him.

— Mark Twain

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

— Mark Twain

Of all the creatures that were made he [man] is the most detestable. Of the entire brood he is the only one — the solitary one — that possesses malice. That is the basest of all instincts, passions, vices — the most hateful...He is the only creature that inflicts pain for sport, knowing it to be pain...Also — in all the list he is the only creature that has a nasty mind.

— Mark Twain

It usually takes me more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech.

— Mark Twain

The trade of critic, in literature, music, and the drama, is the most degraded of all trades.

— Mark Twain

Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't.

— Mark Twain

The Christian's Bible is a drug store. Its contents remain the same, but the medical practice changes.

— Mark Twain

A person who won't read has no advantage over one who can't read.

— Mark Twain

There are people who strictly deprive themselves of each and every eatable, drinkable and smokable which has in any way acquired a shady reputation. They pay this price for health. And health is all they get for it. How strange it is. It is like paying out your whole fortune for a cow that has gone dry.

— Mark Twain

A man is never more truthful than when he acknowledges himself a liar.