Mark Twain Quotes

I was a-trembling, because I’d got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it.

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

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

Every time you stop a school, you will have to build a jail. What you gain at one end you lose at the other. It's like feeding a dog on his own tail. It won't fatten the dog.

When a great orator makes a great speech you are listening to ten centuries and ten thousand men — but we call it his speech, and really some exceedingly small portion of it is his.

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

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

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

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

A big leather-bound volume makes an ideal razorstrap. A thin book is useful to stick under a table with a broken caster to steady it. A large, flat atlas can be used to cover a window with a broken pane. And a thick, old-fashioned heavy book with a clasp is the finest thing in the world to throw at a noisy cat.

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

...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.

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

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

For the history of our race, and each individual's experience, are sown thick with evidences that a truth is not hard to kill, and that a lie well told is immortal...An awkward, feeble, leaky lie is a thing which you ought to make it your unceasing study to avoid; such a lie has no more real permanence than an average truth.

It was against my principles, but I find that principles have no real force except when one is well fed.

The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why. 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.

They are uncomfortable, it is true, but stylish, and that is the main point about clothes.

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.

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

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.

It seems quite unlikely that that problem could have offered difficulties to any but a trained philosopher.

The secret to success: find out where people are going and get there first.

...but deep down in me I knowed it was a lie, and He knowed it. You can’t pray a lie—I found that out.

To arrive at a just estimate of a renowned man's character one must judge it by the standards of his time, not ours.

There is nothing you can say in answer to a compliment. I have been complimented myself a great many times, and they always embarrass me. I always feel that they have not said enough.

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

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.

I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.

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

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

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

Who is the really consistent man? The man who changes. Since change is the law of his being, he cannot be consistent if he stick in a rut.

In statesmanship get the formalities right, never mind about the moralities.

I believe I have no prejudices whatsoever. All I need to know is that a man is a member of the human race. That's bad enough for me.

The man who is ostentatious of his modesty is twin to the statue that wears a fig-leaf.

This is no time to be flitting about the earth. I must cease from the activities proper to youth and begin to take on the dignities and gravities and inertia proper to that season of honorable senility which is on its way.

I find that principles have no real force except when one is well fed.

Scientists have odious manners, except when you prop up their theory; then you can borrow money of them.

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

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

There are no grades of vanity, there are only grades of ability in concealing it.

È più facile ingannare la gente piuttosto che convincerla di essere stata ingannata.

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

Il coraggio è resistenza alla paura e dominio della paura, ma non assenza di paura.

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

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

There are two times in a man's life when he should not speculate: when he can't afford it, and when he can.

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.

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

The more I learn about people, the more I like my dog.

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

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

We despise all reverences and all objects of reverence which are outside the pale of our list of sacred things. And yet, with strange inconsistency, we are shocked when other people despise and defile the things which are holy to us.

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.

To succeed in life, you need two things: ignorance and confidence.

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

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

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

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

Kindness is the language that the deaf can hear and the blind can see.

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 harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.

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

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

There was never yet an uninteresting life. Such a thing is an impossibility. Inside of the dullest exterior there is a drama, a comedy, and a tragedy.

A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.

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

There are no grades of vanity, there are only grades of ability in concealing it.

Habit is habit, and not to be flung out of the window by any man, but coaxed downstairs a step at a time.

Never argue with stupid people, they will drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience.

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

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

The holy passion of friendship is of so sweet, steady, loyal and enduring a nature that it will last through a whole lifetime, if not asked to lend money.

“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."

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

Golf is a good walk spoiled.

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

The secret of getting ahead is getting started.

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

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

There comes a time in every rightly constructed boy's life when he has a raging desire to go somewhere and dig for hidden treasure. (Tom Sawyer)

Put all your eggs in the one basket and WATCH THAT BASKET.