Mark Twain - Man Quotes

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An enemy can partly ruin a man, but it takes a good-natured injudicious friend to complete the thing and make it perfect.

Mark Twain
Man was made at the end of the week's work when God was tired.

Mark Twain
There are many humorous things in the world; among them, the white man's notion that he is less savage than the other savages.

Mark Twain
Pilgrim's Progress, about a man that left his family, it didn't say why. I read considerable in it now and then. The statements was interesting, but tough.

Mark Twain
Frankenstein took some flesh and bones and blood and made a man out of them; the man ran away and fell to raping and robbing and murdering everywhere, and Frankenstein was horrified and in despair, and said, I made him, without asking his consent, and it makes me responsible for every crime he commits. I am the criminal, he is innocent.

Mark Twain
The man who doesn't read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them. It is said that leaders are readers. However if they read trashy magazines for the majority of their time and they never run with the information that they glean from resourceful books, then they may as well have not taken any time to read at all. It is easier to stay out than get out.

Mark Twain
Next you'd see a raft sliding by, away off yonder, and maybe a galoot on it chopping... you'd see the ax flash and come down-you don't hear nothing; you see the ax go up again, and by the time it's above the man's head then you hear the k'chunk!-it had took all that time to come over the water.

Mark Twain
If the man doesn't believe as we do, we say he is a crank, and that settles it. I mean, it does nowadays, because now we can't burn him.

Mark Twain
Of the delights of this world man cares most for sexual intercourse. He will go any length for it—risk fortune, character, reputation, life itself.

Mark Twain
I thoroughly believe that any man who's got anything worthwhile to say will be heard if he only says it often enough.

Mark Twain
The timid man yearns for full value and demands a tenth. The bold man strikes for double value and compromises on par.

Mark Twain
Armor is heavy, yet it is a proud burden, and a man standeth straight in it.

Mark Twain
It is agreed, in this country, that if a man can arrange his religion so that it perfectly satisfies his conscience, it is not incumbent on him to care whether the arrangement is satisfactory to anyone else or not.

Mark Twain
The lie, as a virtue, a principle, is eternal; the lie, as a recreation, a solace, a refuge in time of need, the fourth Grace, the tenth Muse, man's best and surest friend is immortal

Mark Twain
The insincerity of man-all men are liars, partial or hiders of facts, half tellers of truths, shirks, moral sneaks. When a merely honest man appears he is a comet-his fame is eternal-needs no genius, no talent-mere honesty

Mark Twain
It is just like man's vanity and impertinence to call an animal dumb because it is dumb to his dull perceptions.

Mark Twain
I was educated, I was trained, I was a Presbyterian and I knew how these things are done. I knew that in Biblical times if a man committed a sin the extermination of the whole surrounding nation-cattle and all-was likely to happen. I knew that Providence was not particular about the rest, so that He got somebody connected with the one He was after.

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

Mark Twain
The man who is a pessimist before 48 knows too much; if he is an optimist after it, he knows too little.

Mark Twain
It shames the average man to be valued below his own estimate of his worth.

Mark Twain
By his father he is English, by his mother he is Americanto my mind the blend which makes the perfect man.

Mark Twain
Of all the animals, man is the only one that is cruel. He is the only one that inflicts pain for the pleasure of doing it.

Mark Twain
What ought to be done to the man who invented the celebrating of anniversaries? Mere killing would be too light.

Mark Twain
If there is one thing that will make a man peculiarly and insufferable self-conceited, it is to have his stomach behave itself, the first day at sea, when nearly all his comrades are seasick.

Mark Twain
I would rather have my ignorance than another man's knowledge, because I have so much of it.

Mark Twain
When a humorist ventures upon the grave concerns of life he must do his job better than another man or he works harm to his cause.

Mark Twain
I wanted to damage every man in the place, and every woman—and not in their bodies or in their estate, but in their vanity—the place where feeble and foolish people are most vulnerable. So I disguised myself and came back and studied you. You were easy game. You had an old and lofty reputation for honesty, and naturally you were proud of it — it was your treasure of treasures, the very apple of your eye. As soon as I found out that you carefully and vigilantly kept yourselves and your children out of temptation, I knew how to proceed. Why, you simple creatures, the weakest of all weak things is a virtue which has not been tested in the fire.

Mark Twain
He gossips habitually; he lacks the common wisdom to keep still that deadly enemy of man, his own tongue.

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
The cigar-box which the European calls a 'lift' needs but to be compared with our elevators to be appreciated. The lift stops to reflect between floors. That is all right in a hearse, but not in elevators. The American elevator acts like a man's patent purge-it works.

Mark Twain