Mark Twain Quotes

"The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time."

"It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt."

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

"Life would be infinitely happier if we could only be born at the age of eighty and gradually approach eighteen."

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

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

"All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence, and then success is sure."

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

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

"Love seems the swiftest, but it is the slowest of all growths. No man or woman really knows what perfect love is until they have been married a quarter of a century."

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

"A man is never more truthful than when he acknowledges himself a liar."

"He is now rising from affluence to poverty."

"The miracle, or the power, that elevates the few is to be found in their industry, application, and perseverance under the prompting of a brave, determined spirit."

"If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. That is the difference between dog and man."

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

"Laws are sand, customs are rock. Laws can be evaded and punishment escaped but an openly transgressed custom brings sure punishment."

"Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself."

"There are people who think that honesty is always the best policy. This is a superstition; there are times when the appearance of it is worth six of it."

"Humor is mankind's greatest blessing."

"Part of the secret of a success in life is to eat what you like and let the food fight it out inside."

"A round man cannot be expected to fit in a square hole right away. He must have time to modify his shape."

"'Classic.' A book which people praise and don't read."

"The fact that man knows right from wrong proves his intellectual superiority to other creatures; but the fact that he can do wrong proves his moral inferiority to any creature that cannot."

"Man will do many things to get himself loved, he will do all things to get himself envied."

"A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes."

"October. This is one of the peculiarly dangerous months to speculate in stocks in. The others are July, January, September, April, November, May, March, June, December, August, and February."

"Action speaks louder than words but not nearly as often."

"The first of April is the day we remember what we are the other 364 days of the year."

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

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

"'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."

"Good breeding consists of concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of the other person."

"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 universal brotherhood of man is our most precious possession, what there is of it."

"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."

"Life should begin with age and its privileges and accumulations, and end with youth and its capacity to splendidly enjoy such advantages."

"Truth is more of a stranger than fiction."

"The report of my death was an exaggeration."

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

"He had discovered a great law of human action, without knowing it - namely, that in order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to obtain."

"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."

"Laws control the lesser man... Right conduct controls the greater one."

"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."

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

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

"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."

"The rule is perfect: in all matters of opinion our adversaries are insane."
"Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot. By Order of the Author."

"It is just like man's vanity and impertinence to call an animal dumb because it is dumb to his dull perceptions."

"Loyalty to the country always. Loyalty to the government when it deserves it."

"A banker is a fellow who lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining, but wants it back the minute it begins to rain."

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

"If man could be crossed with the cat, it would improve man but deteriorate the cat."

"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."

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

"Not until you become a stranger to yourself will you be able to make acquaintance with the Friend."

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

"A person who won't read has no advantage over one who can't read."

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

"There is an old-time toast which is golden for its beauty. 'When you ascend the hill of prosperity may you not meet a friend.'"

"In the first place, God made idiots. That was for practice. Then he made school boards."

"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."

"Keep away from those who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you believe that you too can become great."

"The educated Southerner has no use for an 'R', except at the beginning of a word."

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

"Everything human is pathetic. The secret source of humor itself is not joy but sorrow. There is no humor in heaven."

"To cease smoking is the easiest thing I ever did. I ought to know because I've done it a thousand times."

"Never put off till tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow."

"By trying we can easily endure adversity. Another man's, I mean."

"The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex overwhelming tasks into small manageable tasks, and then starting on the first one."

"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."

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

"The time to begin writing an article is when you have finished it to your satisfaction. By that time you begin to clearly and logically perceive what it is you really want to say."

"The vast majority of the race, whether savage or civilized, are secretly kind-hearted and shrink from inflicting pain, but in the presence of the aggressive and pitiless minority they don't dare to assert themselves."

"How little a thing can make us happy when we feel that we have earned it."

"God made the Idiot for practice, and then He made the School Board."

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

"Therein lies the defect of revenge: it's all in the anticipation; the thing itself is a pain, not a pleasure; at least the pain is the biggest end of it."

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

"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."

"The very ink with which history is written is merely fluid prejudice."

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

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

"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."

"The coldest winter I ever spent was summer in San Francisco."

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

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

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

"There is no sadder sight than a young pessimist."

"The human race is a race of cowards; and I am not only marching in that procession but carrying a banner."

"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."

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

"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."

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

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

"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."

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

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

"Ideally a book would have no order to it, and the reader would have to discover his own."

"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."

"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.'"

"Morals are an acquirement - like music, like a foreign language, like piety, poker, paralysis - no man is born with them."

"Golf is a good walk spoiled."

"There are lies, damned lies and statistics."

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

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

"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."

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

"I don't give a damn for a man that can only spell a word one way."

"Necessity is the mother of taking chances."

"The worst loneliness is not to be comfortable with yourself."

"There is more real pleasure to be gotten out of a malicious act, where your heart is in it, than out of thirty acts of a nobler sort."


"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."

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

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

"Drag your thoughts away from your troubles... by the ears, by the heels, or any other way you can manage it."

"Biographies are but the clothes and buttons of the man. The biography of the man himself cannot be written."

"Do something everyday that you don't want to do; this is the golden rule for acquiring the habit of doing your duty without pain."

"A human being has a natural desire to have more of a good thing than he needs."

"Such is the human race, often it seems a pity that Noah... didn't miss the boat."

"Humor is the great thing, the saving thing. The minute it crops up, all our irritation and resentments slip away, and a sunny spirit takes their place."

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

"When in doubt, tell the truth."

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

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

"In Boston they ask, how much does he know? In New York, how much is he worth? In Philadelphia, who were his parents?"

"Part of the secret of success in life is to eat what you like and let the food fight it out inside."

"The trouble ain't that there is too many fools, but that the lightning ain't distributed right."

"There are people who strictly deprive themselves of each and every eatable, drinkable, and smokable which has in any way acquired a shady reputation. They pay this price for health. And health is all they get for it. How strange it is. It is like paying out your whole fortune for a cow that has gone dry."

"No sinner is ever saved after the first twenty minutes of a sermon."

"Prosperity is the best protector of principle."

"Civilization is the limitless multiplication of unnecessary necessities."

"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education."

"Nature knows no indecencies; man invents them."

"It is not best that we should all think alike; it is a difference of opinion that makes horse races."

"To refuse awards is another way of accepting them with more noise than is normal."

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

"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."

"Humor is the great thing, the saving thing. The minute it crops up, all our irritations and resentments slip away and a sunny spirit takes their place."

"Man is the only animal that blushes - or needs to."

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

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

"The proper office of a friend is to side with you when you are wrong. Nearly anybody will side with you when you are right."

"Facts are stubborn, but statistics are more pliable."

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

"The human race has one really effective weapon, and that is laughter."

"Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint."

"If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principle difference between a dog and a man."

"Only a government that is rich and safe can afford to be a democracy, for democracy is the most expensive and nefarious kind of government ever heard of on earth."

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

"Let us make a special effort to stop communicating with each other, so we can have some conversation."

"It was wonderful to find America, but it would have been more wonderful to miss it."

"It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare."

"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."

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

"Water, taken in moderation, cannot hurt anybody."

"The man who is a pessimist before 48 knows too much; if he is an optimist after it, he knows too little."

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

"The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated."

"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."

"To be good is noble; but to show others how to be good is nobler and no trouble."

"We are chameleons, and our partialities and prejudices change place with an easy and blessed facility, and we are soon wonted to the change and happy in it."

"Truth is the most valuable thing we have. Let us economize it."

"Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond; cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education."

"One of the most striking differences between a cat and a lie is that a cat has only nine lives."

"Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand."

"Suppose you were an idiot and suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself."

"I have never taken any exercise except sleeping and resting."

"Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn't."

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

"It ain't those parts of the Bible that I can't understand that bother me, it is the parts that I do understand."

"I've never let my school interfere with my education."

"There is a charm about the forbidden that makes it unspeakably desirable."

"Do the thing you fear most and the death of fear is certain."

"Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't."

"Nothing so needs reforming as other people's habits."

"When you cannot get a compliment any other way pay yourself one."

"He is useless on top of the ground; he ought to be under it, inspiring the cabbages."

"The Public is merely a multiplied 'me.'"

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

"My books are like water; those of the great geniuses are wine. (Fortunately) everybody drinks water."

"Only kings, presidents, editors, and people with tapeworms have the right to use the editorial 'we.'"

"It was enough to make a body ashamed of the human race."

"Principles have no real force except when one is well-fed."

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

"Prosperity is the surest breeder of insolence I know."

"It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them."

"It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either."

"Education consists mainly of what we have unlearned."

"People born to be hanged are safe in water."

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

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

"Always acknowledge a fault. This will throw those in authority off their guard and give you an opportunity to commit more."

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

"Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heal that has crushed it."

"Good breeding consists in concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of the other person."

"Man is the Only Animal that Blushes. Or needs to."

"I am opposed to millionaires, but it would be dangerous to offer me the position."

"Never put off until tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow."

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

"Name the greatest of all inventors. Accident."

"Always do right; this will gratify some people and astonish the rest."

"Time cools, time clarifies; no mood can be maintained quite unaltered through the course of hours."

"I never let schooling interfere with my education."

"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."

"A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way."

"Often it does seem a pity that Noah and his party did not miss the boat."

"I can live for two months on a good compliment."

"Man is the only animal that blushes, or needs to."

"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."

"There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact."

"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."

"What a good thing Adam had. When he said a good thing he knew nobody had said it before."

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

"Under certain circumstances, profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer."

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

"Patriot: the person who can holler the loudest without knowing what he is hollering about."

"Once you've put one of his [Henry James] books down, you simply can't pick it up again."


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

"In Paris they simply stared when I spoke to them in French; I never did succeed in making those idiots understand their language."

"Familiarity breeds contempt - and children."

"I cannot call to mind a single instance where I have ever been irreverent, except toward the things which were sacred to other people."

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

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

"Work is a necessary evil to be avoided."

"The radical of one century is the conservative of the next. The radical invents the views. When he has worn them out the conservative adopts them."

"It is easier to stay out than get out."

"I thoroughly disapprove of duels. If a man should challenge me, I would take him kindly and forgivingly by the hand and lead him to a quiet place and kill him."

"Whenever you find that you are on the side of the majority, it is time to reform."

"The radical of one century is the conservative of the next. The radical invents the views. When he has worn them out, the conservative adopts them."

"Names are not always what they seem. The common Welsh name BZJXXLLWCP is pronounced Jackson."

"We Americans... bear the ark of liberties of the world."

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

"India has 2,000,000 gods, and worships them all. In religion, other countries are paupers; India is the only millionaire."

"A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval."

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

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

"The secret source of humor is not joy but sorrow; there is no humor in Heaven."

"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."


"Giving up smoking is the easiest thing in the world. I know because I've done it thousands of times."

"Apparently there is nothing that cannot happen today."

"Everything has its limit - iron ore cannot be educated into gold."

"Climate is what we expect, weather is what we get."

"Soap and education are not as sudden as a massacre, but they are more deadly in the long run."

"But who prays for Satan? Who, in eighteen centuries, has had the common humanity to pray for the one sinner that needed it most?"

"She was not quite what you would call refined. She was not quite what you would call unrefined. She was the kind of person that keeps a parrot."

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

"Adam and Eve had many advantages but the principal one was that they escaped teething."

"Thunder is good, thunder is impressive; but it is lightning that does the work."

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

"Going to law is losing a cow for the sake of a cat."

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

"Better a broken promise than none at all."

"The kingly office is entitled to no respect. It was originally procured by the highwayman's methods; it remains a perpetuated crime, can never be anything but the symbol of a crime. It is no more entitled to respect than is the flag of a pirate."

"All generalizations are false, including this one."

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

"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."

"Wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been."

"Words are only painted fire; a book is the fire itself."

"I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did. I said I didn't know."

"Don't tell fish stories where the people know you; but particularly, don't tell them where they know the fish."

"It is better to take what does not belong to you than to let it lie around neglected."

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

"There is no distinctly American criminal class - except Congress."

"The man that sets out to carry a cat by it's tail learns something that will always be useful and which will never grow dim or doubtful."

"Martyrdom covers a multitude of sins."

"If you hold a cat by the tail you learn things you cannot learn any other way."

"Do the right thing. It will gratify some people and astonish the rest."

"Just the omission of Jane Austen's books alone would make a fairly good library out of a library that hadn't a book in it."

"Let us not be too particular; it is better to have old secondhand diamonds than none at all.""

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

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

"There are people who can do all fine and heroic things but one - keep from telling their happiness to the unhappy."

"I once sent a dozen of my friends a telegram saying 'flee at once - all is discovered.' They all left town immediately."

"Repartee is something we think of twenty-four hours too late."

"When I was younger I could remember anything, whether it happened or not."

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

"Denial ain't just a river in Egypt."

"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."

"All you need is ignorance and confidence and the success is sure."

"Don't let schooling interfere with your education."

"It used to take me all vacation to grow a new hide in place of the one they flogged off me during school term."

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

"We are all alike, on the inside."

"George Washington, as a boy, was ignorant of the commonest accomplishments of youth. He could not even lie."

"Only one thing is impossible for God: To find any sense in any copyright law on the planet."

"The main difference between a cat and a lie is that a cat only has nine lives."

"Why is it that we rejoice at a birth and grieve at a funeral? It is because we are not the person involved."

"I am different from Washington. I have a higher, grander standard of principle. Washington could not lie. I can lie, but I won't."


"What is the difference between a taxidermist and a tax collector? The taxidermist takes only your skin."

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

"When your friends begin to flatter you on how young you look, it's a sure sign you're getting old."

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

"If to be interesting is to be uncommonplace, it is becoming a question, with me, if there are any commonplace people."

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

"Sometimes too much to drink is barely enough."

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

"When angry, count to four; when very angry, swear."

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

"Don't say the old lady screamed. Bring her on and let her scream."

"It's good sportsmanship to not pick up lost golf balls while they are still rolling."

"When in doubt tell the truth."

"I make it a rule never to smoke while I'm sleeping."

"The wit knows that his place is at the tail of a procession."

"Why shouldn't truth be stranger than fiction? Fiction, after all, has to make sense."

"A new oath holds pretty well; but... when it is become old, and frayed out, and damaged by a dozen annual retryings of its remains, it ceases to be serviceable; any little strain will snap it."