Mark Twain - Time Quotes

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

Mark Twain
But the elastic heart of youth cannot be compressed into one constrained shape long at a time.

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
I have thought many times since that if poets when they get discouraged would blow their brains out, they could write very much better when they got well.

Mark Twain
Do not offer a compliment and ask a favor at the same time. A compliment that is charged for is not valuable.

Mark Twain
It takes me a long time to lose my temper, but once lost I could not find it with a dog.

Mark Twain
The true charm of pedestrianism does not lie in the walking, or in the scenery, but in the talking. The walking is good to time the movement of the tongue by, and to keep the blood and the brain stirred up and active; the scenery and the woodsy smells are good to bear in upon a man an unconscious and unobtrusive charm and solace to eye and soul and sense; but the supreme pleasure comes from the talk.

Mark Twain
The Church has opposed every innovation and discovery from the day of Galileo down to our own time, when the use of anesthetics in childbirth was regarded as a sin because it avoided the biblical curse pronounced against Eve.

Mark Twain
Now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions. Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual.

Mark Twain
The 'bus is English. When that is said, all is said. As a rule, any English thing is nineteen times as strong and twenty-three times as heavy as it needs to be. The 'bus fills these requirements.

Mark Twain
No accident ever comes late; it always arrives precisely on time.

Mark Twain
The first thing I ever noticed about Miss Lyon was her incredible laziness. Laziness was my own specialty, & I did not like this competition. Dear me, I was to find out, in the course of time, that in the matter of laziness I was a runaway train on a down grade & she a-standing still. At my very laziest I could hear myself whiz, when she was around.

Mark Twain
We called him Barney for short. We couldn't use his real name, there wasn't time.

Mark Twain
Sometimes you gwyne to git hurt, en sometimes you gwyne to git sick; but every time you's gwyne to git well agin.

Mark Twain
Principles aren't of much account anyway, except at election time. After that you hang them up to let them season.

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
The proverb says, "Born lucky, always lucky," and I am very superstitious. As a small boy I was notoriously lucky. It was usual for one or two of our lads (per annum) to get drowned in the Mississippi or in Bear Creek, but I was pulled out in a 2/3 drowned condition 9 times before I learned to swim, and was considered to be a cat in disguise.

Mark Twain
I have been complimented many times and they always embarrass me; I always feel that they have not said enough.

Mark Twain
Golden rule: Made of hard metal so it could stand severe wear, it not being known at that time that butter would answer.

Mark Twain
Yes, always avoid violence. In this age of charity and kindliness, the time has gone by for such things. Leave dynamite to the low and unrefined.

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
As soon as a man recognizes that he has drifted into age, he gets reminiscent. He wants to talk and talk; and not about the present or the future, but about his old times. For there is where the pathos of his life lies - and the charm of it. The pathos of it is there because it was opulent with treasures that are gone, and the charm of it is in casting them up from the musty ledgers and remembering how rich and gracious they were.

Mark Twain
There's a good spot tucked away somewhere in everybody. You'll be a long time finding it, sometimes.

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
It is sound statesmanship to add two battleships every time our neighbour adds one and two stories to our skyscrapers every time he piles a new one on top of his to threaten our light. There is no limit to this soundness but the sky.

Mark Twain
None believe in me—neither wilt thou. But no matter—within the compass of a month thou shalt be free; and more, the laws that have dishonoured thee, and shamed the English name, shall be swept from the statute books. The world is made wrong; kings should go to school to their own laws, at times, and so learn mercy.

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
Herodotus says, "Very few things happen at the right time, and the rest do not happen at all. The conscientious historian will correct these defects."

Mark Twain
Citizenship? We have none! In place of it we teach patriotism which Samuel Johnson said a hundred and forty or a hundred and fifty years ago was the last refuge of the scoundrel — and I believe that he was right. I remember when I was a boy and I heard repeated time and time again the phrase, 'My country, right or wrong, my country!' How absolutely absurd is such an idea. How absolutely absurd to teach this idea to the youth of the country.

Mark Twain