Mark Twain Quotes

1,400 Sourced Quotes

There is a Moral Sense, and there is an Immoral Sense. History shows us that the Moral Sense enables us to perceive morality and how to avoid it, and that the Immoral Sense enables us to perceive Immorality and how to enjoy it.

Mark Twain
It does look as if Massachusetts were in a fair way to embarrass me with kindnesses this year. In the first place, a Massachusetts judge has just decided in open court that a Boston publisher may sell, not only his own property in a free and unfettered way, but also may as freely sell property which does not belong to him but to me; property which he has not bought and which I have not sold. Under this ruling I am now advertising that judge's homestead for sale, and, if I make as good a sum out of it as I expect, I shall go on and sell out the rest of his property.

Mark Twain
Every improvement that is put upon the real estate is the result of an idea in somebody's head. The skyscraper is another idea; the railroad is another; the telephone and all those things are merely symbols which represent ideas. An andiron, a wash-tub, is the result of an idea that did not exist before.

Mark Twain
I can picture that old time to myself now, just as it was then: the white town drowsing in the sunshine of a summer's morning... the great Mississippi, the majestic, the magnificent Mississippi, rolling its mile-wide tide along, shining in the sun.

Mark Twain
Formerly, if you killed a man, it was possible that you were insane—but now, if you, having friends and money, kill a man, it is evidence that you are a lunatic.

Mark Twain
You tell me whar a man gits his corn pone, en I'll tell you what his 'pinions is.

Mark Twain
The first time I ever saw St. Louis, I could have bought it for six million dollars, and it was the mistake of my life that I did not do it.

Mark Twain
But the elastic heart of youth cannot be compressed into one constrained shape long at a time.

Mark Twain
The fact is, the king was a good deal more than a king, he was a man; and when a man is a man, you can't knock it out of him.

Mark Twain
A man who keeps company with glaciers comes to feel tolerably insignificiant by and by. The Alps and the glaciers together are able to take every bit of conceit out of a man and reduce his self-importance to zero if he will only remain within the influence of their sublime presence long enough to give it a fair and reasonable chance to do its work.

Mark Twain
I had another convulsion of pleasure when Yale made me a Doctor of Literature, because I was not competent to doctor anybody's literature but my own.

Mark Twain
Citing a familiar "American joke":
In Boston they ask, How much does he know? In New York, How much is he worth? In Philadelphia, Who were his parents?

Mark Twain
To my mind, Judas Iscariot was nothing but a low, mean, premature Congressman.

Mark Twain
The report of my death was an exaggeration.

Mark Twain
I was a-trembling, because I'd got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself, "All right, then, I'll GO to hell."

Mark Twain
Forget and forgive. This is not difficult when properly understood.

Mark Twain
The soul and substance of what customarily ranks as patriotism is moral cowardice — and always has been.

Mark Twain
It is noble to teach oneself; it is still nobler to teach others.

Mark Twain
... now... that I am a wise person. As for me, I wish there were some more of us in the world, for I find it lonesome.

Mark Twain
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.

Mark Twain
That is the way of the scientist. He will spend thirty years in building up a mountain range of facts with the intent to prove a certain theory; then he is so happy with his achievement that as a rule he overlooks the main chief fact of all-that all his accumulation proves an entirely different thing.

Mark Twain
It is a mistake that there is no bath that will cure people's manners, but drowning would help.

Mark Twain
We saw a faraway town sleeping in a valley by a winding river; and beyond it, on a hill, a vast gray fortress, with towers and turrets, the first I had ever seen, out of a picture. "Bridgeport?" said I, pointing. "Camelot," said he.

Mark Twain
Whenever he was out of luck and a little down-hearted, he would fall to mourning over the loss of a wonderful cat he used to own (for where women and children are not, men of kindly impulses take up with pets, for they must love something)

Mark Twain
Each man is afraid of his neighbor's disapproval - a thing which, to the general run of the human race, is more dreaded than wolves and death.

Mark Twain
Humor must be one of the chief attributes of God. Plants and animals that are distinctly humorous in form and characteristics are God's jokes.

Mark Twain
I am always reading immoral books on the sly, and then selfishly trying to prevent other people from having the same wicked good time.

Mark Twain
Patriotism is usually the refuge of the scoundrel. He is the man who talks the loudest.

Mark Twain
The political and social morals of America are not only food for laughter, they are an entire banquet.

Mark Twain
He gossips habitually; he lacks the common wisdom to keep still that deadly enemy of man, his own tongue.

Mark Twain