Mark Twain Quotes

1,400 Sourced Quotes

Eight grown Americans out of ten dread the coming of the Fourth, with its pandemonium and its perils, and they rejoice when it is gone-if still alive.

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

Mark Twain
Apparently one of the most uncertain things in the world is the funeral of a religion.

Mark Twain
Yes, even I am dishonest. Not in many ways, but in some. Forty-one, I think it is.

Mark Twain
I am dead to adverbs; they cannot excite me. To misplace an adverb is a thing which I am able to do with frozen indifference; it can never give me a pang. There are subtleties which I cannot master at all — they confuse me, they mean absolutely nothing to me — and this adverb plague is one of them.

Mark Twain
Let us consider that we are all partially insane. It will explain us to each other; it will unriddle many riddles; it will make clear and simple many things which are involved in haunting and harassing difficulties and obscurities now.

Mark Twain
I saw men whom thirty years had changed but slightly; but their wives had grown old. These were good women; it is very wearing to be good.

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

Mark Twain
Every one knew he could foretell wars and famines, though that was not so hard, for there was always a war, and generally a famine somewhere.

Mark Twain
The moral of it is this: If you are of any account, stay at home and make your way by faithful diligence; but if you are 'no account,' go away from home, and then you will have to work, whether you want to or not. Thus you become a blessing to your friends by ceasing to be a nuisance to them-if the people you go among suffer by the operation.

Mark Twain
Get a bicycle. You will not regret it, if you live.

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

Mark Twain
There are 869 different forms of lying, but only one of them has been squarely forbidden. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.

Mark Twain
In all the ages the Roman Church has owned slaves, bought and sold slaves, authorized and encouraged her children to trade in them.... There were the texts; there was no mistaking their meaning;... she was doing in all this thing what the Bible had mapped out for her to do. So unassailable was her position that in all the centuries she had no word to say against human slavery.

Mark Twain
We wish to learn all the curious, outlandish ways of all the different countries, so that we can "show off" and astonish people when we get home. We wish to excite the envy of our untraveled friends with our strange foreign fashions which we can't shake off.

Mark Twain
A thoroughly beautiful woman and a thoroughly homely woman are creations which I love to gaze upon, and which I cannot tire of gazing upon, for each is perfect in her own line.

Mark Twain
One must travel, to learn. Every day, now, old Scriptural phrases that never possessed any significance for me before, take to themselves a meaning.

Mark Twain
Of all God's creatures there is only one that cannot be made the slave of the lash. That one is the cat. If man could be crossed with the cat, it would improve man, but it would deteriorate the cat.

Mark Twain
Age enlarges and enriches the powers of some musical instruments - notably those of the violin - but it seems to set a piano's teeth on edge.

Mark Twain
What is human life? The first third a good time; the rest remembering about it.

Mark Twain
What a world of trouble those who never marry escape! There are many happy matches, it is true, and sometimes "my dear," and "my love" come from the heart; but what sensible bachelor, rejoicing in his freedom and years of discretion, will run the tremendous risk?

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

Mark Twain
Hardly a man in the world has an opinion upon morals, politics or religion which he got otherwise than through his associations and sympathies. Broadly speaking, there are none but corn-pone opinions. And broadly speaking, Corn-Pone stands for Self-Approval. Self-approval is acquired mainly from the approval of other people. The result is Conformity.

Mark Twain
We grant God the possession of all the qualities of mind except the one that keeps the others healthy; that watches over their dignity; that focuses their vision true—humor.

Mark Twain
... when the human race is not grotesque it is because it is asleep and losing its opportunity.

Mark Twain
What work I have done I have done because it has been play. If it had been work I shouldn't have done it.... The work that is really a man's own work is play and not work at all.... When we talk about the great workers of the world we really mean the great players of the world.

Mark Twain
Persons who think there is no such thing as luck—good or bad—are entitled to their opinion, although I think they ought to be shot for it.

Mark Twain
If she were drowning I would not look—but I would not pull her out. I would not be a party to that last and meanest unkindness, treachery to a would-be suicide. My sympathies have been with the suicides for many, many years. I am always glad when the suicide succeeds in his undertaking. I always feel a genuine pain in my heart, a genuine grief, a genuine pity, when some scoundrel stays the suicide's hand and compels him to continue his life.

Mark Twain
If that I could but clothe me in raiment like to thine, and strip my feet, and revel in the mud once, just once, with none to rebuke me or forbid, meseemeth I could forego the crown!

Mark Twain
Try the mustard, - a man can't know what turnips are in perfection without mustard.

Mark Twain