Mark Twain Quotes

Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason.

Necessity is the mother of "taking chances."

What a good thing Adam had - when he said a good thing he knew nobody had said it before.

In prayer we call ourselves 'worms of the dust' but it is only on a sort of tacit understanding tha...

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

Eat a live frog first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day.

I have lived a long life and had many troubles, most of which never happened

It has now been many months, at the present writing, since I have had a nourishing meal, but I shall...

Each man must for himself alone decide what is right and what is wrong, which course is patriotic an...

What would men be without women? Scarce, sir...mighty scarce.

Work and play are words used to describe the same thing under differing conditions.

Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do and play consists of whatever a body is not oblig...

Sometimes too much to drink is barely enough.

It was pitiful for a person born in a wholesome free atmosphere to listen to their humble and hearty...

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

A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.

I followed the other Experiment around, yesterday afternoon, at a distance, to see what it might be ...

In the Spring, I have counted 136 different kinds of weather inside of 24 hours.

Biographies are but the clothes and buttons of the man - the biography of the man himself cannot be ...

It's no wonder that truth is stranger than fiction. Fiction has to make sense.

Good breeding consists in concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of the o...

Of all God's creatures, there is only one that cannot be made slave of the leash. That one is the ca...

Ignorant people think it is the noise which fighting cats make that is so aggravating, but it ain't ...

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

I can live for two months on a good compliment.

Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.

While the rest of the species is descended from apes, redheads are descended from cats.

I set down in a chair by the window and tried to think of something cheerful, but it warn't no use. ...

When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. B...

I haven't any right to criticize books, and I don't do it except when I hate them. I often want to c...

Tomorrow night I appear for the first time before a Boston audience - 4000 critics.

A person with a new idea is a crank until the idea succeeds.

Wit is the sudden marriage of ideas which before their union were not perceived to have any relati...

There is no unhappiness like the misery of sighting land again after a cheerful careless voyage.

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

This explains why, whenever a person says sie to me, I generally try to kill him, if a stranger.

Evolution is a blind giant who rolls a snowball down a hill. The ball is made of flakes—circumstance...

Evolution is the law of policies: Darwin said it, Socrates endorsed it, Cuvier proved it and establi...

I have been scientifically studying the traits and dispositions of the “lower animals” (so-called,) ...

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

To get the right word in the right place is a rare achievement. To condense the diffused light of a ...

If a cat sits on a hot stove, that cat won't sit on a hot stove again. That cat won't sit on a cold ...

Lord save us all from ... a hope tree that has lost the faculty of putting out blossoms.

I notice that you use plain, simple language, short words and brief sentences. That is the way to wr...

Deep down in me I knowed it was a lie and He knowed it. You can't pray a lie-I found that out.

Love seems the swiftest but it is the slowest of all growths. No man or woman really knows what perf...

We don not think, in the holy places; we think in bed, afterwards, when the glare, and the the noise...

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

It usually takes me more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech.

Fewer things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example.

Reality can be beaten with enough imagination.

We are chameleons and our partialities and prejudices change places with an easy and blessed facili...

Love is a madness if thwarted it develops fast.

Summer is the time when it is too hot to do the job that it was too cold to do last winter.

Put all thine eggs in one basket and - watch that basket.

You may say what you want to, but in my opinion she had more sand in her than any girl I ever see; i...

Some people get an education without going to college. The rest get it after they get out.

Truth is mighty and will prevail. There is nothing wrong with this, except that it ain't so.

Now, then, that is the tale. Some of it is true.

Ethical man - a Christian holding four aces.

When I was a boy of fourteen my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man aro...

During the gold rush its a good time to be in the pick and shovel business

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

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

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

Never allow someone to be your priority while allowing yourself to be their option.

Prophesy is a good line of business, but it is full of risks.

You can tell German wine from vinegar ... by the label.

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

The government is merely a servant―merely a temporary servant; it cannot be its prerogative to deter...

If voting made any difference they wouldn't let us do it.

The easy confidence with which I know another man's religion is folly teaches me to suspect that my ...

Suppose you were an idiot, and suppose you were a member of Congress; but I repeat myself.

I wish to become rich so that I can instruct the people and glorify honest poverty a little like t...

When we think of friends, and call their faces out of the shadows, and their voices out of the echoe...

I felt good and all washed clean of sin for the first time I had ever felt so in my life, and I know...

Drag your thoughts awayfrom your troubles...by the ears, by the heels,or any other way you can manag...

This is indeed India! "…. The land of dreams and romance, of fabulous wealth and fabulous poverty, o...

I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them have never happened.

There ain't no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than to travel with them.

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

In a good bookroom you feel in some mysterious way that you are absorbing the wisdom contained in al...

The pause - that impressive silence that eloquent silence that geometrically progressive silence w...

A clear conscience is the sure sign of a bad memory.

Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don't mind, it doesn't matter.

Don't use a five-dollar word when a fifty-cent word will do.

Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to reform (or pause and reflect).

I must have a prodigious quantity of mind it takes me as much as a week sometimes to make it up.

Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear-not absence of fear. Except a creature be part coward...

My mother had a great deal of trouble with me, but I think she enjoyed it.

Loyalty to petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul.

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

Sanity and happiness are an impossible combination.

I have made it a rule never to smoke more than one cigar at a time.

There are two kinds of patriotism -- monarchical patriotism and republican patriotism. In the one ca...

To be a patriot, one had to say, and keep on saying, "Our Country, right or wrong," and urge on the ...

The difference between nonfiction and fiction is that fiction must be absolutely believable.

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

The Christian's Bible is a drug store. Its contents remain the same, but the medical practice change...

I lost Susy thirteen years ago; I lost her mother--her incomparable mother!--five and a half years a...

We are chameleons and our partialities and prejudices change place with an easy and blessed facilit...