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| Mark Twain born Samuel Langhorne Clemens November 30 1835 died April 21 1910 was a renowned American author and satirist. |
Quotes by Mark Twain
A classic is something that everyone wants to have read and nobody wants to read.
I must have a prodigious quantity of mind; it takes me as much as a week sometimes to make it up.
If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man.
It is not likely that any complete life has ever been lived which was not a failure in the secret judgement of the person that lived it.
It is the foreign element that commits our crimes. There is no native criminal class except Congress.
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.
The very ink with which all history is written is merely fluid prejudice.
There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.
There are many scapegoats for our blunders, but the most popular one is Providence.
To be good is noble, but to show others how to be good is nobler, and no trouble.
Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbour. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.
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.
We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it, and stay there, lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot stove lid. She will never sit down on a hot stove lid again; and that is well; but also she will never sit down on a cold one any more.
Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do. Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.
God made the Idiot for practise, and then he made the School Board.
All generalisations are false, including this one.
Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.
Grief can take care of itself; but to get the full value of a joy you must have somebody to divide it with.
All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence, and then success is sure.
There is no sadder sight than a young pessimist.
Always acknowledge a fault frankly. This will throw those in authority off their guard and give you opportunity to commit more.
Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest.
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.
I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did. I said I didn't know.
Always borrow money from a pessimist; he doesn't expect to be paid back.
It usually takes more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech.
Always there remain portions of our heart into which no one is able to enter, invite them as we may.
At fifty a man can be an ass without being an optimist but not an optimist without being as ass.
Be careful of reading health books, you might die of a misprint.
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.
If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; but if you really make them think they'll hate you.
If you see a man approaching you with the obvious intent of doing you good, you should run for your life.
If you tell the truth you don't have to remember anything.
It is by the fortune of God that, in this country, we have three benefits: freedom of speech, freedom of thought, and the wisdom never to use either.
Be virtuous and you will be eccentric.
By and by when each nation has 20,000 battleships and 5,000,000 soldiers we shall all be safe and the wisdom of statesmanship will stand confirmed.
I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.
If you laid all of our laws end to end, there would be no end.
By trying we can easily learn to endure adversity. Another man’s, I mean.
Circumstances make man, not man circumstances.
It is not best to use our morals weekdays, it gets them out of repair for Sunday.
Honesty: The best of all the lost arts.
Good intentions are far more difficult to cope with than malicious behaviour.
Civilisation is a limitless multiplication of unnecessary necessities.
Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.
Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear; not absence of fear.
It is a wise child that knows its own father, and an unusual one that unreservedly approves of him.
Difference between savage and civilised man: one is painted, the other gilded.
Is a person’s public and private opinion the same? It is thought there have been instances.
Do good when you can, and charge when you think they will stand it.
Subtlety is the art of saying what you think and getting out of the way before it is understood.
Do not put off till tomorrow what can be put off till the day after tomorrow just as well.
Do not tell fish stories where the people know you; but particularly, don't tell them where they know the fish.
The human race has one really effective weapon, and that is laughter.
The human race is a race of cowards; and I am not only marching in that procession but carrying a banner.
Work is accomplished by those employees who have not yet reached their level of incompetence.
Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.
Etiquette requires us to admire the human race.
It is better to take what does not belong to you than to let it lie around neglected.
Everybody’s private motto: It’s better to be popular than right.
Everybody knows that if you are too careful you are so occupied in being careful that you are sure to stumble over something.
Prosperity is the best protector of principle.
Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example.
When I was younger, I could remember anything, whether it had happened or not; but my faculties are decaying now and soon I shall be so I cannot remember any but the things that never happened.
In marriage, as in war, it is permitted to take every advantage of the enemy.
Whenever you find that you are on the side of the majority, it is time to reform.
It is sound statesmanship to add two battleships every time our neighbour adds one and two stories to our skyscrapers every time he piles a new one on top of his to threaten our light. There is no limit to this soundness but the sky.
In his private heart no man much respects himself.
What is the difference between a taxidermist and a tax collector? The taxidermist takes only your skin.
Morals consist of political morals, commercial morals, ecclesiastical morals, and morals.
Public servant: Persons chosen by the people to distribute the graft.
Why is it that we rejoice at a birth and grieve at a funeral? It is because we are not the person involved.
Kindness is a language which the deaf can hear and the blind can read.
The man who sets out to carry a cat by its tail learns something that will always be useful and which never will grow dim or doubtful.
Nothing incites to money crimes like great poverty or great wealth.
Procrastination avoids boredom; one never has the feeling that there is nothing important to do.
God’s noblest work? Man. Who found it out? Man.
The low level which commercial morality has reached in America is deplorable. We have humble God fearing Christian men among us who will stoop to do things for a million dollars that they ought not to be willing to do for less than 2 million.
Truth is the most valuable thing we have; so let us economise it.
Wherefore being all of one mind, we do highly resolve that government of the grafted by the grafter for the grafter shall not perish from the earth.
Nothing is made in vain, but the fly came near it.
In any bureaucracy, paperwork increases as you spend more and more time reporting on the less and less you are doing. Stability is achieved when you spend all of your time reporting on the nothing you are doing.
Man is the only animal that blushes; or needs to.
Obscurity and a competence. That is the life that is best worth living.
Nothing so needs reforming as other people’s habits.
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.
Wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been.
God gave man two ears and one tongue so that we listen twice as much as we speak.
