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Quotes by Mark Twain

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 by how much he'd learned in seven years.
– Mark Twain
When I was younger I could remember anything, whether it happened or not.
– 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
Whenever the literary German dives into a sentence, that is the last you are going to see of him until he emerges on the other side of his Atlantic with his verb in his mouth.
– Mark Twain
Where a blood relation sobs, an intimate friend should choke up, a distant acquaintance should sigh, a stranger should merely fumble sympathetically with his handkerchief.
– Mark Twain
Whoever has lived long enough to find out what life is, knows how deep a debt of gratitude we owe to Adam, the first great benefactor of our race. He brought death into the world.
– 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
Wit is the sudden marriage of ideas which before their union were not perceived to have any relation.
– Mark Twain
Words are only painted fire; a book is the fire itself.
– Mark Twain
Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do. Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.
– Mark Twain
Wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been.
– Mark Twain
You can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.
– Mark Twain
Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.
– Mark Twain
Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it's time to pause and reflect.
– Mark Twain
...gratitude is a debt which usually goes on accumulating like blackmail; the more you pay, the more is exacted. In time, you are made to realize that the kindness done you is become a curse and you wish it had not happened.
– Mark Twain
To cease smoking is the easiest thing I ever did. I ought to know, I've done it a thousand times.
– 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 when awake.
– Mark Twain
Do not fear the enemy, for your enemy can only take your life. It is far better that you fear the media, for they will steal your HONOR. That awful power, the public opinion of a nation, is created in America by a horde of ignorant, self-complacent simpletons who failed at ditching and shoemaking and fetched up in journalism on their way to the poorhouse.
– Mark Twain
Of the delights of this world, man cares most for sexual intercourse. He will go to any length for it-risk fortune, character, reputation, life itself.
– Mark Twain
A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.
– Mark Twain
An Englishman is a person who does things because they have been done before. An American is a person who does things because they haven't been done before.
– Mark Twain
Barring that natural expression of villainy which we all have, the man looked honest enough.
– Mark Twain
By trying we can easily learn to endure adversity -- another man's I mean.
– Mark Twain
Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear - not absence of fear.
– Mark Twain
Do something every day that you don't want to do; this is the golden rule for acquiring the habit of doing your duty without pain.
– Mark Twain
Don't part with your illusions. When they are gone you may still exist, but you have ceased to live.
– Mark Twain
Education: that which reveals to the wise, and conceals from the stupid, the vast limits of their knowledge.
– 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
Habit is habit and not to be flung out of the window by any man, but coaxed downstairs a step at a time.
– Mark Twain
Humor is the great thing, the saving thing. The minute it crops up, all our irritations and resentments slip away and a sunny spirit takes their place.
– Mark Twain
If you tell the truth you don't have to remember anything.
– Mark Twain
In religion and politics, people's beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second hand, and without examination.
– Mark Twain
It is better to deserve honors and not have them than to have them and not to deserve them.
– Mark Twain
Never put off until tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow.
– Mark Twain
Part of the secret of success in life is to eat what you like and let the food fight it out inside.
– Mark Twain
The worst loneliness is not to be comfortable with yourself.
– 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
Time cools, time clarifies; no mood can be maintained quite unaltered through the course of hours.
– Mark Twain
When you cannot get a compliment any other way pay yourself one.
– Mark Twain
I cannot call to mind a single instance where I have ever been irreverent, except toward the things which were sacred to other people.
– 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
The history of our race, and each individual's experience, are sown thick with evidence that a truth is not hard to kill and that a lie told well is immortal.
– Mark Twain
A human being has a natural desire to have more of a good thing than he needs.
– Mark Twain
The universal brotherhood of man is our most precious possession, what there is of it.
– Mark Twain
It takes your enemy and your friend, working together, to hurt you: the one to slander you, and the other to get the news to you.
– Mark Twain
All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence; then success is sure.
– Mark Twain
Sane and intelligent human beings are like all other human beings, and carefully and cautiously and diligently conceal their private real opinions from the world and give out fictitious ones in their stead for general consumption.
– Mark Twain
We are always more anxious to be distinguished for a talent which we do not possess, than to be praised for the fifteen which we do possess.
– Mark Twain
Good breeding consists of concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of the other person.
– Mark Twain
An enemy can partly ruin a man, but it takes a good-natured injudicious friend to complete the thing and make it perfect.
– Mark Twain
Our opinions do not really blossom into fruition until we have expressed them to someone else.
– Mark Twain
A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.
– Mark Twain
It was enough to make a body ashamed of the human race.
– Mark Twain
How little a thing can make us happy when we feel that we have earned it.
– 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
I am not one of those who in expressing opinions confine themselves to facts.
– Mark Twain
Work is a necessary evil to be avoided.
– Mark Twain
When you fish for love, bait with your heart, not your brain.
– Mark Twain
When people do not respect us we are sharply offended yet in his private heart no man much respects himself.
– 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
What a good thing Adam had. When he said a good thing he knew nobody had said it before.
– Mark Twain
We have the best government that money can buy.
– 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 lack of money is the root of all evil.
– Mark Twain
The finest clothing made is a person's own skin, but, of course, society demands something more than this.
– Mark Twain
Principles have no real force except when one is well-fed.
– Mark Twain
Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it.
– Mark Twain
My mother had a great deal of trouble with me, but I think she enjoyed it.
– Mark Twain
It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare.
– 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
In the first place, God made idiots. That was for practice. Then he made school boards.
– 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
Humor must not professedly teach and it must not professedly preach, but it must do both if it would live forever.
– Mark Twain
Honesty is the best policy - when there is money in it.
– Mark Twain
Golf is a good walk spoiled.
– Mark Twain
Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.
– Mark Twain
Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example.
– Mark Twain
Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.
– Mark Twain
Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.
– Mark Twain
Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint.
– Mark Twain
A man's character may be learned from the adjectives which he habitually uses in conversation.
– Mark Twain