Mark Twain Quotes

1,400 Sourced Quotes

Right is right, and wrong is wrong, and a body ain't got no business doing wrong when he ain't ignorant and knows better.

Mark Twain
It was not that Adam ate the apple for the apple's sake, but because it was forbidden. It would have been better for us-oh infinitely better for us-if the serpent had been forbidden

Mark Twain
Put all your eggs in the one basket, and—watch that basket.

Mark Twain
A man never reaches that dizzy height of wisdom when he can no longer be led by the nose.

Mark Twain
God's inhumanity to man makes countless thousands mourn.

Mark Twain
The common eye sees only the outside of things, and judges by that, but the seeing eye pierces through and reads the heart and the soul, finding there capacities which the outside didn't indicate or promise, and which the other kind of eye couldn't detect.

Mark Twain
In estimating worldly values the Jew is not shallow, but deep. With precocious wisdom he found out in the morning of time that some men worship rank, some worship heroes, some worship power, some worship God, and that over these ideals they dispute and cannot unite—but that they all worship money; so he made it the end and aim of his life to get it. The cost to him has been heavy; his success has made the whole human race his enemy...

Mark Twain
To forget pain is to be painless; to forget care is to be rid of it; to go abroad is to accomplish both.

Mark Twain
The humorous story is told gravely; the teller does his best to conceal the fact that he even dimly suspects that there is anything funny about it.

Mark Twain
The finest clothing made is a person's own skin, but, of course, society demands something more than this.

Mark Twain
The late Bill Nye once said "I have been told that Wagner's music is better than it sounds."

Mark Twain
I cannot see how a man of any large degree of humorous perception can ever be religious — unless he purposely shut the eyes of his mind & keep them shut by force.

Mark Twain
Consider well the proportions of things. It is better to be a young June-bug than an old bird of paradise.

Mark Twain
He was sunshine most always-I mean he made it seem like good weather.

Mark Twain
I have had a "call" to literature, of a low order— i.e. humorous. It is nothing to be proud of, but it is my strongest suit... seriously scribbling to excite the laughter of God's creatures.

Mark Twain
God, so atrocious in the Old Testament, so attractive in the New—the Jekyl and Hyde of sacred romance.

Mark Twain
The gentle reader will never, never know what a consummate ass he can become until he goes abroad. I speak now, of course, in the supposition that the gentle reader has not been abroad, and therefore is not already a consummate ass. If the case be otherwise, I beg his pardon and extend to him the cordial hand of fellowship and call him brother.

Mark Twain
When you fish for love, bait with your heart, not your brain.

Mark Twain
Note that venerable proverb: Children and fools always speak the truth. The deduction is plain: adults and wise persons never speak it.

Mark Twain
A soiled baby, with a neglected nose, cannot be conscientiously regarded as a thing of beauty; and inasmuch as babyhood spans but three short years, no baby is competent to be a joy forever.

Mark Twain
Within the last quarter of a century, in America, several sects of curers have appeared under various names and have done notable things in the way of healing ailments without the use of medicines. There are the Mind Cure, the Faith Cure, the Prayer Cure, the Mental Science Cure, and the Christian-Science Cure; and apparently they all do their miracles with the same old, powerful instrument—the patient's imagination. Differing names, but no difference in the process. But they do not give that instrument the credit; each sect claims that its way differs from the ways of the others.

Mark Twain
There is nothing that saps one's confidence as the knowing how to do a thing

Mark Twain
If we would learn what the human race really is at bottom, we need only observe it in election times.

Mark Twain
There isn't time—so brief is life—for bickerings, apologies, heartburnings, callings to account. There is only time for loving—and but an instant, so to speak, for that.

Mark Twain
It's lovely to live on a raft. We had the sky up there, all speckled with stars, and we used to lay on our backs and look up at them, and discuss about whether they was made or only just happened.

Mark Twain
I know the look of an apple that is roasting and sizzling on the hearth on a winter's evening, and I know the comfort that comes of eating it hot, along with some sugar and a drench of cream... I know how the nuts taken in conjunction with winter apples, cider, and doughnuts, make old people's tales and old jokes sound fresh and crisp and enchanting.

Mark Twain
These wisdoms are for the luring of youth toward high moral altitudes. The author did not gather them from practice, but from observation. To be good is noble; but to show others how to be good is nobler and no trouble.

Mark Twain
They spell it "Vinci" and pronounce it "Vinchy". Foreigners always spell better than they pronounce.

Mark Twain
I said there was but one solitary thing about the past worth remembering, and that was the fact that it is past-can't be restored.

Mark Twain
Let us draw the curtain of charity over the rest of this scene

Mark Twain