Mark Twain Quotes

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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
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
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
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
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
France has neither winter nor summer nor morals. Apart from these drawbacks it is a fine country.

Mark Twain
A man accustomed to American food and American domestic cookery would not starve to death suddenly in Europe, but I think he would gradually waste away, and eventually die.

Mark Twain
It now seems plain to me that that theory ought to be vacated in favor of a new and truer one...the Descent of Man from the Higher Animals.

Mark Twain
There is no character, howsoever good and fine, but it can be destroyed by ridicule, howsoever poor and witless.

Mark Twain
When people do not respect us we are sharply offended; yet in his private heart no man much respects himself.

Mark Twain
We have been housekeeping a fortnight, now—long enough to have learned how to pronounce the servants' names, but not how to spell them. We shan't ever learn to spell them; they were invented in Hungary and Poland, and on paper they look like the alphabet out on a drunk.

Mark Twain
Every one is a moon, and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody.

Mark Twain
... from the beginning of my sojourn in this world there was a persistent vacancy in me where the industry ought to be. (Ought to was is better, perhaps, though the most of the authorities differ as to this.)

Mark Twain
Sufficient unto the day is one baby. As long as you are in your right mind don't you ever pray for twins. Twins amount to a permanent riot; and there ain't any real difference between triplets and a insurrection.

Mark Twain
There are many scapegoats for our sins, but the most popular one is Providence.

Mark Twain
He says every man is a moon and has a side which he turns toward nobody: you have to slip around behind if you want to see it.

Mark Twain
I do not wish any reward but to know I have done the right thing.

Mark Twain
I shall never use profanity except in discussing house rent and taxes.

Mark Twain
The face of the water, in time, became a wonderful book- a book that was a dead language to the uneducated passenger, but which told its mind to me without reserve, delivering its most cherished secrets as clearly as if it uttered them with a voice. And it was not a book to be read once and thrown aside, for it had a new story to tell every day.

Mark Twain
No one doubts—certainly not I—that the mind exercises a powerful influence over the body. From the beginning of time, the sorcerer, the interpreter of dreams, the fortune-teller, the charlatan, the quack, the wild medicine-man, the educated physician, the mesmerist, and the hypnotist have made use of the client's imagination to help them in their work. They have all recognized the potency and availability of that force. Physicians cure many patients with a bread pill; they know that where the disease is only a fancy, the patient's confidence in the doctor will make the bread pill effective.

Mark Twain
Whoever has lived long enough to find out what life is, knows how deep a debt of gratitude we owe to Adam, the first great benefactor of our race. He brought death into the world.

Mark Twain
Often, the surest way to convey misinformation is to tell the strict truth.

Mark Twain
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

Mark Twain
There was no crime in unconscious plagiarism; that I committed it everyday, that he committed it everyday, that every man alive on earth who writes or speaks commits it every day and not merely once or twice but every time he open his mouth… there is nothing of our own in it except some slight change born of our temperament, character, environment, teachings and associations

Mark Twain
I can understand German as well as the maniac that invented it, but I talk it best through an interpreter.

Mark Twain
History has tried hard to teach us that we can't have good government under politicians. Now, to go and stick one at the very head of the government couldn't be wise.

Mark Twain
As I have said before, I never had any large respect for good spelling. That is my feeling yet. Before the spelling-book came with its arbitrary forms, men unconsciously revealed shades of their characters, and also added enlightening shades of expression to what they wrote by their spelling, and so it is possible that the spelling-book has been a doubtful benevolence to us.

Mark Twain
Habit is habit and not to be flung out of the window by any man, but coaxed downstairs a step at a time. You cannot eliminate habits that no longer serve you. You can only replace them with new habits that support your goals. Moment by moment, you need to live with awareness and structure the habits that you include or exclude in your days.

Mark Twain
We could use up two Eternities in learning all that is to be learned about our own world and the thousands of nations that have arisen and flourished and vanished from it. Mathematics alone would occupy me eight million years.

Mark Twain
But I reckon I got to light out for the Territory ahead of the rest, because Aunt Sally she's going to adopt me and sivilize me and I can't stand it. I been there before.

Mark Twain