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Quotes by Mark Twain


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

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

When in doubt, tell the truth.
– Mark Twain

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.
– Mark Twain

When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained.
– Mark Twain
A man is never more truthful than when he acknowledges himself a liar.
– Mark Twain
A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way.
– Mark Twain
A person who won't read has no advantage over one who can't read.
– Mark Twain
A person with a new idea is a crank until the idea succeeds.
– 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
Action speaks louder than words but not nearly as often.
– Mark Twain
Adam and Eve had many advantages but the principal one was that they escaped teething.
– Mark Twain
Advertisements contain the only truths to be relied on in a newspaper.
– Mark Twain
Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand.
– Mark Twain
Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don't mind, it doesn't matter.
– Mark Twain
All generalizations are false, including this one.
– Mark Twain
All say, How hard it is that we have to die - a strange complaint to come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
– 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
Apparently there is nothing that cannot happen today.
– Mark Twain
Be careless in your dress if you will, but keep a tidy soul.
– Mark Twain
Better a broken promise than none at all.
– Mark Twain
Biographies are but the clothes and buttons of the man. The biography of the man himself cannot be written.
– Mark Twain
But who prays for Satan? Who, in eighteen centuries, has had the common humanity to pray for the one sinner that needed it most?
– Mark Twain
Cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education.
– Mark Twain
Civilization is the limitless multiplication of unnecessary necessities.
– Mark Twain
'Classic.' A book which people praise and don't read.
– Mark Twain
Climate is what we expect, weather is what we get.
– Mark Twain
Deep down in me I knowed it was a lie, and He knowed it. You can't pray a lie - I found that out.
– Mark Twain
Denial ain't just a river in Egypt.
– Mark Twain
Do the thing you fear most and the death of fear is certain.
– Mark Twain
Don't say the old lady screamed. Bring her on and let her scream.
– Mark Twain
Don't tell fish stories where the people know you; but particularly, don't tell them where they know the fish.
– Mark Twain
'Don't you worry, and don't you hurry.' I know that phrase by heart, and if all other music should perish out of the world it would still sing to me.
– 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
Duties are not performed for duty's sake, but because their neglect would make the man uncomfortable. A man performs but one duty - the duty of contenting his spirit, the duty of making himself agreeable to himself.
– Mark Twain
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 me label you as they may.
– Mark Twain
Education consists mainly of what we have unlearned.
– Mark Twain
Everything has its limit - iron ore cannot be educated into gold.
– 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
Facts are stubborn, but statistics are more pliable.
– Mark Twain
Familiarity breeds contempt. How accurate that is. The reason we hold truth in such respect is because we have so little opportunity to get familiar with it.
– Mark Twain
From his cradle to his grave a man never does a single thing which has any first and foremost object but one - to secure peace of mind, spiritual comfort, for himself.
– Mark Twain
George Washington, as a boy, was ignorant of the commonest accomplishments of youth. He could not even lie.
– Mark Twain
Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please.
– Mark Twain
Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company.
– Mark Twain
Going to law is losing a cow for the sake of a cat.
– Mark Twain
Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.
– Mark Twain
Have a place for everything and keep the thing somewhere else; this is not advice, it is merely custom.
– Mark Twain
He is now rising from affluence to poverty.
– Mark Twain
He is useless on top of the ground; he ought to be under it, inspiring the cabbages.
– Mark Twain
Heaven is by favor; if it were by merit your dog would go in and you would stay out. Of all the creatures ever made man is the most detestable. Of the entire brood, he is the only one that possesses malice. He is the only creature that inflicts pain for sport, knowing it to be pain.
– Mark Twain
Humor is mankind's greatest blessing.
– Mark Twain
I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened.
– Mark Twain
I am different from Washington. I have a higher, grander standard of principle. Washington could not lie. I can lie, but I won't.
– Mark Twain
I am not interested to know whether vivisection produces results that are profitable to the human race or doesn't... The pain which it inflicts upon unconsenting animals is the basis of my enmity toward it, and it is to me sufficient justification of the enmity without looking further.
– Mark Twain
I can live for two months on a good compliment.
– Mark Twain
I can teach anybody how to get what they want out of life. The problem is that I can't find anybody who can tell me what they want.
– Mark Twain
I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it.
– Mark Twain
I don't like to commit myself about heaven and hell - you see, I have friends in both places.
– Mark Twain
I have been complimented many times and they always embarrass me; I always feel that they have not said enough.
– Mark Twain
I have been studying the traits and dispositions of the lower animals (so called) and contrasting them with the traits and dispositions of man. I find the result humiliating to me.
– Mark Twain
I have found out that there ain't no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than to travel with them.
– Mark Twain
I have made it a rule never to smoke more that one cigar at a time.
– 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
I make it a rule never to smoke while I'm sleeping.
– 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
I never let schooling interfere with my education.
– Mark Twain
I once sent a dozen of my friends a telegram saying 'flee at once - all is discovered.' They all left town immediately.
– Mark Twain
I think a compliment ought to always precede a complaint, where one is possible, because it softens resentment and insures for the complaint a courteous and gentle reception.
– Mark Twain
I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did. I said I didn't know.
– Mark Twain
Ideally a book would have no order to it, and the reader would have to discover his own.
– Mark Twain
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.
– Mark Twain
If man could be crossed with the cat, it would improve man but deteriorate the cat.
– Mark Twain
If to be interesting is to be uncommonplace, it is becoming a question, with me, if there are any commonplace people.
– Mark Twain
If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. That is the difference between dog and man.
– Mark Twain
Ignorant people think it is the noise which fighting cats make that is so aggravating, but it ain't so; it is the sickening grammar that they use.
– Mark Twain
In a museum in Havana there are two skulls of Christopher Columbus, one when he was a boy and one when he was a man.
– Mark Twain
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
In certain trying circumstances, urgent circumstances, desperate circumstances, profanity furnishes a relief denied even to prayer.
– Mark Twain
In India, cold weather is merely a conventional phrase and has come into use through the necessity of having some way to distinguish between weather which will melt a brass door-knob and weather which will only make it mushy.
– Mark Twain
In statesmanship get the formalities right, never mind about the moralities.
– Mark Twain
In the real world, nothing happens at the right place at the right time. It is the job of journalists and historians to correct that.
– Mark Twain
In the Spring, I have counted 136 different kinds of weather inside of 24 hours.
– Mark Twain
India has 2,000,000 gods, and worships them all. In religion, other countries are paupers; India is the only millionaire.
– 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
It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so.
– Mark Twain
It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native criminal class except Congress.
– Mark Twain
It is better to take what does not belong to you than to let it lie around neglected.
– Mark Twain
It is hopeless for the occasional visitor to try to keep up with Chicago-she outgrows his prophecies faster than he can make them. She is always a novelty; for she is never the Chicago you saw when you passed through the last time.
– 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
It is not best that we should all think alike; it is a difference of opinion that makes horse races.
– Mark Twain
It used to take me all vacation to grow a new hide in place of the one they flogged off me during school term.
– Mark Twain
It usually takes me more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech.
– Mark Twain
It's good sportsmanship to not pick up lost golf balls while they are still rolling.
– Mark Twain
It's no wonder that truth is stranger than fiction. Fiction has to make sense.
– 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
Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see.
– Mark Twain
Last week I stated that this woman was the ugliest woman I had ever seen. I have since been visited by her sister and now wish to withdraw that statement.
– Mark Twain
Laws control the lesser man... Right conduct controls the greater one.
– Mark Twain
Let us live so that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.
– Mark Twain