Mark Twain Quotes

1,400 Sourced Quotes

There are several good protections against temptations, but the surest is cowardice.

Mark Twain
The best way to cheer yourself is to try to cheer somebody else up.

Mark Twain
Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond; cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education.

Mark Twain
Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.

Mark Twain
If you tell the truth you don't have to remember anything.

Mark Twain
I must have a prodigious quantity of mind; it takes me as much as a week sometimes to make it up.

Mark Twain
All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence; then success is sure.

Mark Twain
You need not expect to get your book right the first time. Go to work and revamp or rewrite it. God only exhibits his thunder and lightning at intervals, and so they always command attention. These are God's adjectives. You thunder and lightning too much; the reader ceases to get under the bed, by and by.

Mark Twain
Geological time is not money. A pity too; for it would have abolished poverty from the earth. Let us adopt geological time, then time being money, — there will be no more poverty. We are all missionaries (propagandists of our views). Each of us disapproves of the other missionaries; in fact detests them, as a rule. I am one of the herd myself. It is noticeable that the professional always uses the one license: "Go ye into all the world," and ignores the Golden Rule which would restrain him from entering China and one or two other countries where he is not wanted and is not welcome.

Mark Twain
Not a single right is indestructible: a new might can at any time abolish it, hence, man possesses not a single permanent right.
God is Might (and He is shifty, malicious, and uncertain).

Mark Twain
There ain't no way to find out why a snorer can't hear himself snore.

Mark Twain
Obscurity and a competence—that is the life that is best worth living.

Mark Twain
There warn't anybody at the church, except maybe a hog or two, for there warn't any lock on the door, and hogs likes a puncheon floor in summer-time because it's cool. If you notice, most folks don't go to church only when they've got to; but a hog is different.

Mark Twain
Pity is for the living, envy is for the dead.

Mark Twain
The citizen who thinks he sees that the commonwealth's political clothes are worn out, and yet holds his peace and does not agitate for a new suit, is disloyal, he is a traitor. That he may be the only one who thinks he sees this decay, does not excuse him: it is his duty to agitate anyway, and it is the duty of others to vote him down if they do not see the matter as he does.

Mark Twain
NOTICE. To the next Burglar. There is nothing but plated ware in this house, now and henceforth. You will find it in that brass thing in the dining room over in the corner by the basket of kittens. If you want the basket, put the kittens in the brass thing. Do not make a noise—it disturbs the family. You will find rubbers in the front hall, by that thing which has the umbrellas in it, chiffonier, I think they call it, or pergola, or something like that. Please close the door when you go away. Very truly yours, S.L. Clemens

Mark Twain
To be vested with enormous authority is a fine thing; but to have the onlooking world consent to it is a finer.

Mark Twain
Many a small thing has been made large by the right kind of advertising.

Mark Twain
You take the lies out of him, and he'll shrink to the size of your hat; you take the malice out of him, and he'll disappear.

Mark Twain
We may not doubt that society in heaven consists mainly of undesirable persons.

Mark Twain
My land, the power of training! Of influence! Of education! It can bring a body up to believe anything.

Mark Twain
In the laboratory there are no fustian ranks, no brummagem aristocracies; the domain of Science is a republic, and all its citizens are brothers and equals, its princes of Monaco and its stonemasons of Cromarty meeting, barren of man-made gauds and meretricious decorations, upon the one majestic level!

Mark Twain
Gratitude is a debt which usually goes on accumulating like blackmail; the more you pay, the more is exacted.

Mark Twain
Grown people everywhere are always likely to cling to the religion they were brought up in.

Mark Twain
.... it is not wise to keep the fire going under a slander unless you can get some large advantage out of keeping it alive. Few slanders can stand the wear of silence.

Mark Twain
I have seen it stated that no expert is quick enough to run over a dog; that a dog is always able to skip out of his way. I think that that may be true; but I think that the reason he couldn't run over the dog was because he was trying to. I did not try to run over any dog. But I ran over every dog that came along.

Mark Twain
Give an Irishman lager for a month, and he's a dead man. An Irishman is lined with copper, and the beer corrodes it. But whiskey polishes the copper and is the saving of him.

Mark Twain
Kings cannot ennoble thee, thou good, great soul, for One who is higher than kings hath done that for thee; but a king can confirm thy nobility to men.

Mark Twain
She kept up her compliments, and I kept up my determination to deserve them or die.

Mark Twain
A man can be a Christian or a patriot, but he can't legally be a Christian and a patriot - except in the usual way: one of the two with the mouth, the other with the heart.

Mark Twain