Mark Twain Quotes

1,400 Sourced Quotes

In my age, as in my youth, night brings me many a deep remorse. I realize that from the cradle up I have been like the rest of the race - never quite sane in the night.

Mark Twain
The radical of one century is the conservative of the next. The radical invents the views. When he has worn them out, the conservative adopt.

Mark Twain
There is no such thing as the Queen's English. The property has gone into the hands of a joint stock company and we own the bulk of the shares!

Mark Twain
I played Chess with him and would have beaten him sometimes only he always took back his last move, and ran the game out differently

Mark Twain
Newport, Rhode Island, that breeding place—that stud farm, so to speak—of aristocracy; aristocracy of the American type; that auction mart where English nobilities come to trade hereditary titles for American girls and cash.

Mark Twain
A wise man does not waste so good a commodity as lying for naught.

Mark Twain
Among the three or four million cradles now rocking in the land are some which this nation would preserve for ages as sacred things, if we could know which ones they are.

Mark Twain
Very well, then, where do we arrive? Where do we arrive with our respect, our homage, our filial affection? At Adam! At Adam, every time. We can't build a monument to a germ, but we can build one to Adam, who is in the way to turn myth in in fifty years and be entirely forgotten in two hundred. We can build a monument and save his name to the world forever, and we'll do it!

Mark Twain
I am a great & sublime fool. But then I am God's fool, & all His works must be contemplated with respect.

Mark Twain
Citizenship is what makes a republic - monarchies can get along without it.

Mark Twain
Words are only painted fire, a look is the fire itself. She gave that look, and carried it away to the treasury of heaven, where all things that are divine belong.

Mark Twain
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.

Mark Twain
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.

Mark Twain
The exercise of an extraordinary gift is the supremest pleasure in life.

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

Mark Twain
I haven't a particle of confidence in a man who has no redeeming petty vices whatsoever.

Mark Twain
All creatures kill—there seems to be no exception; but of the whole list, man is the only one that kills for fun; he is the only one that kills in malice, the only one that kills for revenge.

Mark Twain
S'pose a man was to come to you and say Pollyvoo-franzy - what would you think?

Mark Twain
[Patriotism]...is a word which always commemorates a robbery. There isn't a foot of land in the world which doesn't represent the ousting and re-ousting of a longline of successive "owners" who each in turn, as "patriots" with proud swelling hearts defended it against the next gang of "robbers" who came to steal it and did — and became swelling-hearted patriots in their turn.

Mark Twain
Now what I contend is that my body is my own, at least I have always so regarded it. If I do harm through my experimenting with it, it is I who suffer, not the state.

Mark Twain
The Blessings-of-Civilization Trust, wisely and cautiously administered, is a Daisy. There is more money in it, more territory, more sovereignty, and other kinds of emolument, than there is in any other game that is played. But Christendom has been playing it badly of late years, and must certainly suffer by it, in my opinion. She has been so eager to get every stake that appeared on the green cloth, that the People who Sit in Darkness have noticed it — they have noticed it, and have begun to show alarm. They have become suspicious of the Blessings of Civilization.

Mark Twain
Heaven goes by favor. If it went by merit, you would stay out and your dog would go in.

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

Mark Twain
To be a patriot, one had to say, and keep on saying, "Our Country, right or wrong," and urge on the little war. Have you not perceived that that phrase is an insult to the nation?

Mark Twain
I like Joan of Arc best of all my books; and it is the best; I know it perfectly well.

Mark Twain
It makes one hope and believe that a day will come when, in the eye of the law, literary property will be as sacred as whiskey, or any other of the necessaries of life. It grieves me to think how far more profound and reverent a respect the law would have for literature if a body could only get drunk on it.

Mark Twain
This is the fairest picture on our planet, the most enchanting to look upon, the most satisfying to the eye and spirit. To see the sun sink down, drowned in his pink and purple and golden floods, and overwhelm Florence with tides of color that make all the sharp lines dim and faint and turn the solid city to a city of dreams, is a sight to stir the coldest nature, and make a sympathetic one drunk with ecstasy.

Mark Twain
Now and then we had a hope that if we lived and were good, God would permit us to be pirates.

Mark Twain
I said there was nothing so convincing to an Indian as a general massacre. If he could not approve of the massacre, I said the next surest thing for an Indian was soap and education. Soap and education are not as sudden as a massacre, but they are more deadly in the long run; because a half-massacred Indian may recover, but if you educate him and wash him, it is bound to finish him some time or other.

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

Mark Twain