Mark Twain Quotes

1,400 Sourced Quotes

What we most admire is the vast capacity of that intellect which, without effort, takes in at once all the domains of science — all the past, the present and the future, all the errors of two thousand years, all the encouraging signs of the passing times, all the bright hopes of the coming age.

Mark Twain
There isn't a Parallel of Latitude but thinks it would have been the Equator if it had had its rights.

Mark Twain
It is best to prove things by actual experiment; then you know; whereas if you depend on guessing and supposing and conjecturing, you will never get educated.

Mark Twain
Sum all the gifts that man is endowed with, and we give our greatest share of admiration to his energy. And today, if I were a heathen, I would rear a statue to Energy and fall down and worship it!

Mark Twain
We find not much in ourselves to admire, we are always privately wanting to be like somebody else. If everybody was satisfied with himself, there would be no heroes

Mark Twain
The castle-building habit, the day-dreaming habit - how it grows! what a luxury it becomes; how we fly to its enchantments at every idle moment, how we revel in them, steep our souls in them, intoxicate ourselves with their beguiling fantasies - oh, yes, and how soon and how easily our dream-life and our material life become so intermingled and so fused together that we can't quite tell which is which, anymore.

Mark Twain
It was not my opinion; I think there is no sense in forming an opinion when there is no evidence to form it on. If you build a person without any bones in him he may look fair enough to the eye, but he will be limber and cannot stand up; and I consider that evidence is the bones of an opinion.

Mark Twain
But we love the Old Travelers. We love to hear them prate and drivel and lie.

Mark Twain
The humorist who invented trial by jury played a colossal practical joke upon the world, but since we have the system we ought to try and respect it. A thing which is not thoroughly easy to do, when we reflect that by command of the law a criminal juror must be an intellectual vacuum, attached to a melting heart and perfectly macaronian bowels of compassion.

Mark Twain
To be human is to have one's little modicum of romance secreted away in one's composition. One never ceases to make a hero of one's self, (in private,) during life, but only alters the style of heroism from time to time as the drifting years belittle certain gods of his admiration and raise up others in their stead.

Mark Twain
To my mind that literature is best and most enduring which is characterized by a noble simplicity.

Mark Twain
Sometimes I lifted a chicken that warn't roosting comfortable, and took him along. Pap always said, take a chicken when you get achance, because if you don't want him yourself you can easy find somebody that does, and a good deed ain't ever forgot. I never see papa when he didn't want the chicken himself, but that is what he used to say, anyway.

Mark Twain
No throne exists that has a right to exist, and no symbol of it, flying from any flagstaff, is righteously entitled to wear any device but the skull and crossbones of that kindred industry which differs from royalty only businesswise-merely as retail differs from wholesale.

Mark Twain
Eternal rest sounds comforting in the pulpit; well, you try it once, and see how heavy time will hang on your hands.

Mark Twain
Some civilized women would lose half their charm without dress and some would lose all of it.

Mark Twain
Civilization largely consists in hiding human nature. When the barbarian learns to hide it we account him enlightened.

Mark Twain
I know all those people. I have friendly, social, and criminal relations with the whole lot of them.

Mark Twain
It is easy to see that the inventor of the heaven did not originate the idea, but copied it from the show-ceremonies of some sorry little sovereign State up in the back settlements of the Orient somewhere.

Mark Twain
The lightning there is peculiar; it is so convincing, that when it strikes a thing it doesn't leave enough of that thing behind for you to tell whether-Well, you'd think it was something valuable, and a Congressman had been there.

Mark Twain
All dentists talk while they work. They have inherited this from their professional ancestors, the barbers.

Mark Twain
What is there in Rome for me to see that others have not seen before me? What is there for me to touch that others have not touched? What is there for me to feel, to learn, to hear, to know, that shall thrill me before it pass to others? What can I discover?--Nothing. Nothing whatsoever. One charm of travel dies here.

Mark Twain
Gold in its native state is but dull, unornamental stuff, and only lowborn metals excite the admiration of the ignorant with an ostentatious glitter. However, like the rest of the world, I still go on underrating men of gold and glorifying men of mica.

Mark Twain
If you want to see comets that are comets, you've got to go outside of our solar system - where there's room for them, you understand.

Mark Twain
For instance, take this sample: he has imagined a heaven, and has left entirely out of it the supremest of all his delights, the one ecstasy that stands first and foremost in the heart of every individual of his race - and of ours - sexual intercourse!It is as if a lost and perishing person in a roasting desert should be told by a rescuer he might choose and have all longed-for things but one, and he should elect to leave out water!

Mark Twain
It has been said that a Scotchman has not seen the world until he has seen Edinburgh; and I think that I may say that an American has not seen the United States until he has seen Mardi Gras in New Orleans.

Mark Twain
The community is eminently Portuguese - that is to say, it is slow, poor, shiftless, sleepy, and lazy.

Mark Twain
What marriage is to morality, a properly conducted licensed liquor traffic is to sobriety.

Mark Twain
A man's first duty is to his own conscience and honor; the party and country come second to that, and never first.

Mark Twain
I wonder how much it would take to buy a soap bubble, if there were only one in the world.

Mark Twain
Stars are good, too. I wish I could get some to put in my hair. But I suppose I never can.

Mark Twain