Mark Twain - God Quotes

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The laws of Nature, that is to say the laws of God, plainly made every human being a law unto himself, we must steadfastly refuse to obey those laws, and we must as steadfastly stand by the conventions which ignore them, since the statutes furnish us peace, fairly good government, and stability, and therefore are better for us than the laws of God, which would soon plunge us into confusion and disorder and anarchy if we should adopt them.

Mark Twain
When a man arrives at great prosperity God did it: when he falls into disaster he did it himself.

Mark Twain
None of us can be as great as God, but any of us can be as good.

Mark Twain
God pours out love upon all with a lavish hand — but He reserves vengeance for His very own.

Mark Twain
We all do no end of feeling, and we mistake it for thinking. And out of it we get an aggregation which we consider a boon. Its name is public opinion. It is held in reverence. Some think it the voice of God.

Mark Twain
I have a religion-but you will call it blasphemy. It is that there is a God for the rich man but none for the poor.....Perhaps your religion will sustain you, will feed you-I place no dependence in mine. Our religions are alike, though, in one respect-neither can make a man happy when he is out of luck.

Mark Twain
The statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting the blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception.

Mark Twain
What God lacks is convictions- stability of character. He ought to be a Presbyterian or a Catholic or something- not try to be everything.

Mark Twain
"In God We Trust." It is the choicest compliment that has ever been paid us, and the most gratifying to our feelings. It is simple, direct, gracefully phrased: it always sounds well — In God We Trust. I don't believe it would sound any better if it were true. And in a measure it is true — half the nation trusts in Him. That half has decided it.

Mark Twain
God was left out of the Constitution but was furnished a front seat on the coins of the country.

Mark Twain
To trust the God of the Bible is to trust an irascible, vindictive, fierce and ever fickle and changeful master.

Mark Twain
The true Southern watermelon is a boon apart, and not to be mentioned with commoner things. It is chief of this world'd luxuries, king by grace of God over all the fruits of the earth. When one has tasted it, he knows what the angels eat. It was not a Southern watermelon that Eve took: we know it because she repented.

Mark Twain
The motto stated a lie. If this nation has ever trusted in God, that time has gone by; for nearly half a century almost its entire trust has been in the Republican party and the dollar—mainly the dollar. I recognize that I am only making an assertion and furnishing no proof; I am sorry, but this is a habit of mine; sorry also that I am not alone in it; everybody seems to have this disease.

Mark Twain
Human beings seem to be a poor invention. If they are the noblest works of God where is the ignoblest?

Mark Twain
How unfortunate and how narrowing a thing it is for a man to have wealth who makes a god of it instead of a servant.

Mark Twain
Only one thing is impossible for God: To find any sense in any copyright law on the planet.

Mark Twain
One should be gentle with the ignorant, for they are the chosen of God.

Mark Twain
Our Bible reveals to us the character of our god with minute and remorseless exactness... It is perhaps the most damnatory biography that exists in print anywhere. It makes Nero an angel of light and leading by contrast.

Mark Twain
Jesus died to save men — a small thing for an immortal to do, & didn't save many, anyway; but if he had been damned for the race that would have been act of a size proper to a god, & would have saved the whole race. However, why should anybody want to save the human race, or damn it either? Does God want its society? Does Satan?

Mark Twain
It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them.

Mark Twain
The gods offer no rewards for intellect. There was never one yet that showed any interest in it...

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

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
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
God's inhumanity to man makes countless thousands mourn.

Mark Twain
Being made merely in the image of God but not otherwise resembling him enough to be mistaken by anybody but a very near sighted person.

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
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
If God is what people say there can be no one in the universe so unhappy as He; for He sees unceasingly myriads of His creatures suffering unspeakable miseries—and besides this foresees how they are going to suffer during the remainder of their lives. One might as well say, "As unhappy as God."

Mark Twain
I am a great & sublime fool. But then I am God's fool, & all His works must be contemplated with respect.

Mark Twain