Mark Twain - Time Quotes

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Eternal rest sounds comforting in the pulpit; well, you try it once, and see how heavy time will hang on your hands.

Mark Twain
Nations do not think, they only feel. They get their feelings at second hand through their temperaments, not their brains. A nation can be brought -- by force of circumstances, not argument -- to reconcile itself to any kind of government or religion that can be devised; in time it will fit itself to the required conditions; later it will prefer them and will fiercely fight for them.

Mark Twain
Is the human race a joke? Was it devised and patched together in a dull time when there was nothing important to do?

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

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 person that had took a bull by the tail once had learnt sixty or seventy times as much as a person that hadn't, and said a person that started in to carry a cat home by the tail was getting knowledge that was always going to be useful to him, and warn't ever going to grow dim or doubtful. Chances are, he isn't likely to carry the cat that way again, either. But if he wants to, I say let him!

Mark Twain
Senator: Person who makes laws in Washington when not doing time.

Mark Twain
A man who is not born with the novel-writing gift has a troublesome time of it when he tries to build a novel. I know this from experience. He has no clear idea of his story; in fact he has no story. He merely has some people in his mind, and an incident or two, also a locality, and he trusts he can plunge those people into those incidents with interesting results.

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

Mark Twain
Being rich ain't what it's cracked up to be. It's just worry and worry, and sweat and sweat, and a-wishing you was dead all the time.

Mark Twain
I had been to school... and could say the multiplication table up to six times seven is thirty-five, and I don't reckon I could ever get any further than that if I was to live forever. I don't take no stock in mathematics, anyway.

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
Start it at no particular time of your life; wander at your free will all over your life; talk only about the thing which interests you for the moment; drop it the moment its interest threatens to pale.

Mark Twain
You have noticed that the human being is a curiosity. In times past he has had (and worn out and flung away) hundreds and hundreds of religions; today he has hundreds and hundreds of religions, and launches not fewer than three new ones every year. I could enlarge on that number and still be within the facts.

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
None but an ass pays a compliment and asks a favour at the same time. There are many asses.

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

Mark Twain
We all know about the habits of the ant, we know all about the habits of the bee, but we know nothing at all about the habits of the oyster. It seems almost certain that we have been choosing the wrong time for studying the oyster.

Mark Twain
It has taken a weary long time to persuade American Presbyterians to give up infant damnation and try to bear it the best they can.

Mark Twain
Only when a republic's life is in danger should a man uphold his government when it is wrong. There is no other time.

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 takes some little time to accept and realize the fact that while you have been growing old, your friends have not been standing still, in that matter.

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
I have stopped smoking now and then, for a few months at a time, but it was not on principle, it was only to show off; it was to pulverize those critics who said I was a slave to my habits and couldn't break my bonds.

Mark Twain
Somehow, every time the magic of fol-de-rol tried conclusions with the magic of science, the magic of fol-de-rol got left.

Mark Twain
This autobiography of mine is a mirror, and I am looking at myself in it all the time. Incidentally I notice the people that pass along at my back - I get glimpses of them in the mirror - and whenever they say or do anything that can help advertise me and flatter me and raise me in my own estimation, I set these things down in my autobiography.

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

Mark Twain