Mark Twain - Time Quotes

100 Sourced Quotes

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

Mark Twain
His head was an hour-glass; it could stow an idea, but it had to do it a grain at a time, not the whole idea at once.

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
The pilgrims were human beings. Otherwise they would have acted differently. They had come a long and difficult journey, and now when the journey was nearly finished, and they learned that the main thing they had come for had ceased to exist, they didn't do as horses or cats or angle-worms would probably have done — turn back and get at something profitable — no, anxious as they had before been to see the miraculous fountain, they were as much as forty times as anxious now to see the place where it had used to be. There is no accounting for human beings.

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

Mark Twain
I had now—not for the first time, nor the thousandth—trampled upon an old and wise and stern maxim of mine, to wit: "Supposing is good, but finding out is better."

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

Mark Twain
A person who has during all time maintained the imposing position of spiritual head of four-fifths of the human race, and political head of the whole of it, must be granted the possession of executive abilities of the loftiest order.

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
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
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
It is a time when one's spirit is subdued and sad, one knows not why; when the past seems a storm-swept desolation, life a vanity and a burden, and the future but a way to death. It is a time when one is filled with vague longings; when one dreams of flight to peaceful islands in the remote solitudes of the sea, or folds his hands and says, What is the use of struggling, and toiling and worrying any more? let us give it all up.

Mark Twain
I think the President is clearly insane in several ways, and insanest upon war and its supreme glories. I think he longs for a big war wherein he can spectacularly perform as chief general and chief admiral, and go down in history as the only monarch of modern times that has served both offices at the same time.

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

Mark Twain
I am always reading immoral books on the sly, and then selfishly trying to prevent other people from having the same wicked good time.

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

Mark Twain
Experience teaches us only one thing at a time - and hardly that, in my case.

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
Every time I reform in one direction I go overboard in another.

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
It is hopeless for the occasional visitor to try to keep up with Chicago-she outgrows his prophecies faster than he can make them. She is always a novelty; for she is never the Chicago you saw when you passed through the last time.

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

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
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
The Germans have an inhuman way of cutting up their verbs. Now a verb has a hard time enough of it in this world when it's all together. It's downright inhuman to split it up. But that's just what those Germans do. They take part of a verb and put it down here, like a stake, and they take the other part of it and put it away over yonder like another stake, and between these two limits they just shovel in German. from "Disappearance of Literature

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