Mark Twain Quotes

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

~ 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

In religion and politics people's beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination, from authorities who have not themselves examined the questions at issue but have taken them at second-hand from other non-examiners, whose opinions about them were not worth a brass farthing.

~ Mark Twain

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

~ Mark Twain

Good judgement comes from experience, experience comes from bad judgement.

~ 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 you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you; that is the principal difference between a dog and a man.

~ Mark Twain

By trying we can easily learn to endure adversity - another man's I mean.

~ Mark Twain

When angry count four; when very angry, swear.

~ Mark Twain

Most people are bothered by those passages of Scripture they do not understand, but the passages that bother me are those I do understand.

~ Mark Twain

Man is the only animal that blushes. Or needs to.

~ Mark Twain

The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them.

~ Mark Twain

My books are water; those of the great geniuses are wine - everybody drinks water.

~ Mark Twain

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

~ Mark Twain

Civilization is a limitless multiplication of unnecessary necessities.

~ Mark Twain

If you can't get a compliment any other way, pay yourself one.

~ Mark Twain

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

~ Mark Twain

We are discreet sheep; we wait to see how the drove is going, and then go with the drove.

~ Mark Twain

A good memory and a tongue tied in the middle is a combination which gives immortality to conversation.

~ Mark Twain

My kind of loyalty was loyalty to one's country, not to its institutions or its officeholders. The country is the real thing, the substantial thing, the eternal thing; it is the thing to watch over, and care for, and be loyal to institutions are extraneous, they are its mere clothing, and clothing can wear out, become ragged, cease to be comfortable, cease to protect the body from winter, disease, and death.

~ Mark Twain

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

~ Mark Twain

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

~ Mark Twain

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

~ Mark Twain

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

~ Mark Twain

When a man's dog turns against him it is time for a wife to pack her trunk and go home to mama.

~ Mark Twain

Have a place for everything and keep the thing somewhere else; this is not advice, it is merely custom.

~ 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

We owe a deep debt of gratitude to Adam, the first great benefactor of the human race: he brought death into the world.

~ Mark Twain

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

~ Mark Twain

The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug.

~ Mark Twain

The principle of give and take is the principle of diplomacy - give one and take ten.

~ Mark Twain

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

~ Mark Twain

I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.

~ Mark Twain

It is easier to manufacture seven facts out of whole cloth than one emotion.

~ Mark Twain

The first half of life consists of the capacity to enjoy without the chance; the last half consists of the chance without the capacity.

~ Mark Twain

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

~ Mark Twain

Familiarity breeds contempt - and children.

~ Mark Twain

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

~ Mark Twain

Fortune knocks at every man's door once in a life, but in a good many cases the man is in a neighboring saloon and does not hear her.

~ Mark Twain

Satan hasn't a single salaried helper; the Opposition employ a million.

~ Mark Twain

Dis nie die dele van die Bybel wat ek NIE verstaan nie, wat my pla nie. Dis die dele wat ek WEL verstaan wat my pla.

~ Mark Twain

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

~ 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

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

What a man misses mostly in heaven is company.

~ Mark Twain

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

~ Mark Twain

Heaven goes by favor; if it went by merit, you would stay out and your dog would go in.

~ Mark Twain

The only people I know who still believe in hell are the ones who had the proper kind of upbringing.

~ Mark Twain

History teaches us that whenever a weak and ignorant people possess a thing which a strong and enlightened people want, it must be yielded up peaceably.

~ Mark Twain

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

~ Mark Twain

It is better to deserve honors and not have them than to have them and not deserve them.

~ Mark Twain

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

~ Mark Twain

The so-called human race.

~ Mark Twain

There is a great deal of human nature in people.

~ Mark Twain

There are many humorous things in the world, among them the white man's notion that he is less savage than the other savages.

~ Mark Twain

The older we grow the greater becomes our wonder at how much ignorance one can contain without bursting one's clothes.

~ Mark Twain

I would rather have my ignorance than another man's knowledge, because I have so much of it.

~ Mark Twain

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

~ Mark Twain

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

~ Mark Twain

You cannot depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.

~ Mark Twain

Apparently there is nothing that cannot happen today.

~ Mark Twain

It takes your enemy and your friend, working together to hurt you to the heart; the one to slander you and the other to get the news to you.

~ Mark Twain

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

~ Mark Twain

The way it is now, the asylums can hold all the sane people but if we tried to shut up the insane we should run out of building materials.

~ Mark Twain

'n Engelsman is 'n persoon wat dinge doen omdat hulle voorheen
so gedoen is. 'n Amerikaner is 'n persoon wat dinge doen omdat
hulle nog nie tevore gedoen is nie.

~ Mark Twain