Mark Twain Quotes

‘It’s not the size of the dog in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the dog.’ – Mark Twain

‘It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.’ – Mark Twain

‘If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.’ – Mark Twain

‘If it’s your job to eat a frog, it’s best to do it first thing in the morning. And If it’s your job to eat two frogs, it’s best to eat the biggest one first.’ – Mark Twain

‘Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.’ – Mark Twain

‘Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.’ – Mark Twain

‘Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please.’ – Mark Twain

‘Suppose you were an idiot, and suppose you were a member of Congress; but I repeat myself.’ – Mark Twain

‘All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence, and then success is sure.’ – Mark Twain

‘Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured.’ – Mark Twain

‘The secret of getting ahead is getting started.’ – Mark Twain

‘The only way to keep your health is to eat what you don’t want, drink what you don’t like, and do what you’d rather not.’ – Mark Twain

‘The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.’ – Mark Twain

‘In the first place, God made idiots. That was for practice. Then he made school boards.’ – Mark Twain

‘Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.’ – Mark Twain

‘My mother had a great deal of trouble with me, but I think she enjoyed it.’ – Mark Twain

‘A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way.’ – Mark Twain

‘The lack of money is the root of all evil.’ – Mark Twain

‘Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear.’ – Mark Twain

‘Buy land, they’re not making it anymore.’ – Mark Twain

‘Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it.’ – Mark Twain

‘Do the right thing. It will gratify some people and astonish the rest.’ – Mark Twain

‘I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened.’ – Mark Twain

‘Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company.’ – Mark Twain

‘Never put off till tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow.’ – Mark Twain

‘You can’t depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.’ – Mark Twain

‘It ain’t those parts of the Bible that I can’t understand that bother me, it is the parts that I do understand.’ – Mark Twain

‘Giving up smoking is the easiest thing in the world. I know because I’ve done it thousands of times.’ – Mark Twain

‘In the Spring, I have counted 136 different kinds of weather inside of 24 hours.’ – Mark Twain

‘Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn’t.’ – Mark Twain

‘Golf is a good walk spoiled.’ – Mark Twain

‘The best way to cheer yourself up is to try to cheer somebody else up.’ – Mark Twain

‘Don’t let schooling interfere with your education.’ – Mark Twain

‘Do the thing you fear most and the death of fear is certain.’ – Mark Twain

‘Action speaks louder than words but not nearly as often.’ – Mark Twain

‘The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.’ – Mark Twain

‘Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.’ – Mark Twain

‘Part of the secret of a success in life is to eat what you like and let the food fight it out inside.’ – Mark Twain

‘Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt.’ – Mark Twain

‘A man’s character may be learned from the adjectives which he habitually uses in conversation.’ – Mark Twain

‘When you fish for love, bait with your heart, not your brain.’ – Mark Twain

‘I can live for two months on a good compliment.’ – Mark Twain

‘All generalizations are false, including this one.’ – Mark Twain

‘There is no distinctly American criminal class – except Congress.’ – Mark Twain

‘Never pick a fight with people who buy ink by the barrel.’ – Mark Twain

‘Everything human is pathetic. The secret source of humor itself is not joy but sorrow. There is no humor in heaven.’ – Mark Twain

‘There are basically two types of people. People who accomplish things, and people who claim to have accomplished things. The first group is less crowded.’ – Mark Twain

‘Don’t go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.’ – Mark Twain

‘Let us endeavor so to live so that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.’ – Mark Twain

‘There are people who can do all fine and heroic things but one – keep from telling their happiness to the unhappy.’ – Mark Twain

‘Thunder is good, thunder is impressive; but it is lightning that does the work.’ – Mark Twain

‘We have the best government that money can buy.’ – Mark Twain

‘The human race has one really effective weapon, and that is laughter.’ – Mark Twain

‘Life would be infinitely happier if we could only be born at the age of eighty and gradually approach eighteen.’ – Mark Twain

‘Facts are stubborn, but statistics are more pliable.’ – Mark Twain

‘It usually takes me more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech.’ – Mark Twain

‘Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint.’ – Mark Twain

‘Loyalty to petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul.’ – Mark Twain

‘Don’t part with your illusions. When they are gone, you may still exist, but you have ceased to live.’ – Mark Twain

‘I don’t like to commit myself about heaven and hell – you see, I have friends in both places.’ – Mark Twain

‘There are lies, damned lies and statistics.’ – 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

‘It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare.’ – Mark Twain

‘Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.’ – Mark Twain

‘A person who won’t read has no advantage over one who can’t read.’ – Mark Twain

‘The right word may be effective, but no word was ever as effective as a rightly timed pause.’ – Mark Twain

‘I came in with Halley’s Comet in 1835. It is coming again next year, and I expect to go out with it. It will be the greatest disappointment of my life if I don’t go out with Halley’s Comet. The Almighty has said, no doubt: ‘Now here are these two unaccountable freaks; they came in together, they must go out together.” – Mark Twain

‘Humor is mankind’s greatest blessing.’ – Mark Twain

‘The first of April is the day we remember what we are the other 364 days of the year.’ – Mark Twain

‘Cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education.’ – Mark Twain

‘I didn’t attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it.’ – Mark Twain

‘Many a small thing has been made large by the right kind of advertising.’ – Mark Twain

‘Apparently there is nothing that cannot happen today.’ – Mark Twain

‘Laws control the lesser man… Right conduct controls the greater one.’ – Mark Twain

‘A man is never more truthful than when he acknowledges himself a liar.’ – Mark Twain

‘Wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been.’ – Mark Twain

‘Everything has its limit – iron ore cannot be educated into gold.’ – Mark Twain

‘It’s no wonder that truth is stranger than fiction. Fiction has to make sense.’ – Mark Twain

‘She was not quite what you would call refined. She was not quite what you would call unrefined. She was the kind of person that keeps a parrot.’ – Mark Twain

‘Name the greatest of all inventors. Accident.’ – Mark Twain

‘Climate is what we expect, weather is what we get.’ – Mark Twain

‘When in doubt tell the truth.’ – Mark Twain

‘Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts.’ – Mark Twain

‘The trouble ain’t that there is too many fools, but that the lightning ain’t distributed right.’ – Mark Twain

‘The more things are forbidden, the more popular they become.’ – Mark Twain

‘If the world comes to an end, I want to be in Cincinnati. Everything comes there ten years later.’ – Mark Twain

‘If you hold a cat by the tail you learn things you cannot learn any other way.’ – Mark Twain

‘The more you explain it, the more I don’t understand it.’ – Mark Twain

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

‘I must have a prodigious quantity of mind; it takes me as much as a week sometimes to make it up.’ – Mark Twain

‘But who prays for Satan? Who, in eighteen centuries, has had the common humanity to pray for the one sinner that needed it most?’ – Mark Twain

‘Grief can take care if itself, but to get the full value of a joy you must have somebody to divide it with.’ – Mark Twain

‘There is a charm about the forbidden that makes it unspeakably desirable.’ – Mark Twain

‘Only kings, presidents, editors, and people with tapeworms have the right to use the editorial ‘we.’ – Mark Twain’ – Mark Twain

‘Be careless in your dress if you must, but keep a tidy soul.’ – Mark Twain

‘I was seldom able to see an opportunity until it had ceased to be one.’ – Mark Twain

‘It were not best that we should all think alike; it is difference of opinion that makes horse races.’ – Mark Twain

‘Patriot: the person who can holler the loudest without knowing what he is hollering about.’ – Mark Twain

‘Under certain circumstances, urgent circumstances, desperate circumstances, profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer.’ – Mark Twain

‘There is no sadder sight than a young pessimist.’ – Mark Twain

‘A person with a new idea is a crank until the idea succeeds.’ – Mark Twain

‘The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter – ’tis the difference between the lightning-bug and the lightning.’ – Mark Twain

‘Necessity is the mother of taking chances.’ – Mark Twain

‘The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them.’ – Mark Twain

‘Often it does seem such a pity that Noah and his party did not miss the boat.’ – Mark Twain

‘A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval.’ – Mark Twain

‘Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example.’ – Mark Twain

‘What is the difference between a taxidermist and a tax collector? The taxidermist takes only your skin.’ – Mark Twain

‘I don’t give a damn for a man that can only spell a word one way.’ – Mark Twain

‘When people do not respect us we are sharply offended; yet in his private heart no man much respects himself.’ – Mark Twain

‘The very ink with which history is written is merely fluid prejudice.’ – Mark Twain

‘The most interesting information comes from children, for they tell all they know and then stop.’ – Mark Twain

‘If man could be crossed with the cat it would improve man, but deteriorate the cat.’ – Mark Twain

‘Soap and education are not as sudden as a massacre, but they are more deadly in the long run.’ – Mark Twain

‘Civilization is the limitless multiplication of unnecessary necessities.’ – Mark Twain

‘Familiarity breeds contempt – and children.’ – Mark Twain

‘To refuse awards is another way of accepting them with more noise than is normal.’ – Mark Twain

‘I never let schooling interfere with my education.’ – Mark Twain

‘Truth is mighty and will prevail. There is nothing wrong with this, except that it ain’t so.’ – Mark Twain

‘Prosperity is the best protector of principle.’ – Mark Twain

‘Truth is the most valuable thing we have. Let us economize it.’ – Mark Twain

‘Work is a necessary evil to be avoided.’ – Mark Twain

‘Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do. Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.’ – Mark Twain

‘Why is it that we rejoice at a birth and grieve at a funeral? It is because we are not the person involved.’ – Mark Twain

‘The main difference between a cat and a lie is that a cat only has nine lives.’ – Mark Twain

‘All emotion is involuntary when genuine.’ – Mark Twain

‘When angry, count to four; when very angry, swear.’ – Mark Twain

‘What, sir, would the people of the earth be without woman? They would be scarce, sir, almighty scarce.’ – Mark Twain

‘Lord save us all from old age and broken health and a hope tree that has lost the faculty of putting out blossoms.’ – Mark Twain

‘When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained.’ – Mark Twain

‘Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond; cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education.’ – Mark Twain

‘All right, then, I’ll go to hell.’ – Mark Twain

‘Noise proves nothing. Often a hen who has merely laid an egg cackles as if she laid an asteroid.’ – Mark Twain

‘Do not tell fish stories where the people know you; but particularly, don’t tell them where they know the fish.’ – Mark Twain

‘It’s good sportsmanship to not pick up lost golf balls while they are still rolling.’ – Mark Twain

‘My books are like water; those of the great geniuses are wine. (Fortunately) everybody drinks water.’ – Mark Twain

‘Against the assault of laughter, nothing can stand.’ – Mark Twain

‘Man will do many things to get himself loved, he will do all things to get himself envied.’ – Mark Twain

‘No sinner is ever saved after the first twenty minutes of a sermon.’ – Mark Twain

‘Principles have no real force except when one is well-fed.’ – Mark Twain

‘The human race is a race of cowards; and I am not only marching in that procession but carrying a banner.’ – Mark Twain

‘There are several good protections against temptation, but the surest is cowardice.’ – Mark Twain

‘When your friends begin to flatter you on how young you look, it’s a sure sign you’re getting old.’ – Mark Twain

‘Let us not be too particular; it is better to have old secondhand diamonds than none at all.’ – Mark Twain

‘Wit is the sudden marriage of ideas which, before their union, were not perceived to have any relation.’ – Mark Twain

‘The public is the only critic whose opinion is worth anything at all.’ – Mark Twain

‘It is better to take what does not belong to you than to let it lie around neglected.’ – Mark Twain

‘What a wee little part of a person’s life are his acts and his words! His real life is led in his head, and is known to none but himself.’ – Mark Twain

‘The Public is merely a multiplied ‘me.” – Mark Twain

‘Man was made at the end of the week’s work, when God was tired.’ – Mark Twain

‘I have never taken any exercise, except sleeping and resting, and I never intend to take any.’ – Mark Twain

‘Thousands of geniuses live and die undiscovered – either by themselves or by others.’ – Mark Twain

‘By trying we can easily learn to endure adversity. Another man’s, I mean.’ – Mark Twain

‘It is better to deserve honors and not have them than to have them and not deserve them.’ – Mark Twain

‘Loyalty to the Nation all the time, loyalty to the Government when it deserves it.’ – Mark Twain

‘Ideally a book would have no order to it, and the reader would have to discover his own.’ – Mark Twain

‘Man is the only animal that blushes – or needs to.’ – Mark Twain

‘Biographies are but the clothes and buttons of the man. The biography of the man himself cannot be written.’ – 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

‘God made the Idiot for practice, and then He made the School Board.’ – Mark Twain

‘I never smoke to excess – that is, I smoke in moderation, only one cigar at a time.’ – Mark Twain

‘We are all alike, on the inside.’ – Mark Twain

‘Good breeding consists in concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of the other person.’ – Mark Twain

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

‘A round man cannot be expected to fit in a square hole right away. He must have time to modify his shape.’ – Mark Twain

‘Why shouldn’t truth be stranger than fiction? Fiction, after all, has to make sense.’ – Mark Twain

‘Drag your thoughts away from your troubles… by the ears, by the heels, or any other way you can manage it.’ – Mark Twain

‘Nothing so needs reforming as other people’s habits.’ – Mark Twain

‘Few of us can stand prosperity. Another man’s, I mean.’ – Mark Twain

‘Repartee is something we think of twenty-four hours too late.’ – Mark Twain

‘To be good is noble; but to show others how to be good is nobler and no trouble.’ – Mark Twain

‘Sometimes too much to drink is barely enough.’ – Mark Twain

‘He is now rising from affluence to poverty.’ – Mark Twain

‘It is easier to stay out than get out.’ – Mark Twain

‘Honesty is the best policy – when there is money in it.’ – Mark Twain

‘Don’t say the old lady screamed. Bring her on and let her scream.’ – Mark Twain

‘India has 2,000,000 gods and worships them all. In religion, all other countries are paupers; India is the only millionaire.’ – Mark Twain

‘In ‘Huckleberry Finn,’ I have drawn Tom Blankenship exactly as he was. He was ignorant, unwashed, insufficiently fed; but he had as good a heart as ever any boy had.’ – 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

‘Substitute ‘damn’ every time you’re inclined to write ‘very’; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.’ – Mark Twain

‘I make it a rule never to smoke while I’m sleeping.’ – Mark Twain

‘The Christian’s Bible is a drug store. Its contents remain the same, but the medical practice changes.’ – Mark Twain

‘Education consists mainly of what we have unlearned.’ – Mark Twain

‘Water, taken in moderation, cannot hurt anybody.’ – Mark Twain

‘When red-haired people are above a certain social grade their hair is auburn.’ – Mark Twain

”Classic.’ A book which people praise and don’t read.’ – Mark Twain

‘Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn’t.’ – Mark Twain

‘There are times when one would like to hang the whole human race, and finish the farce.’ – Mark Twain

‘The rule is perfect: in all matters of opinion our adversaries are insane.’ – Mark Twain

‘It was wonderful to find America, but it would have been more wonderful to miss it.’ – Mark Twain

‘How lucky Adam was. He knew when he said a good thing, nobody had said it before.’ – Mark Twain

‘Prophesy is a good line of business, but it is full of risks.’ – Mark Twain

‘The educated Southerner has no use for an ‘r’, except at the beginning of a word.’ – Mark Twain

‘Martyrdom covers a multitude of sins.’ – Mark Twain

‘We Americans… bear the ark of liberties of the world.’ – Mark Twain

‘When I was younger I could remember anything, whether it happened or not.’ – Mark Twain

‘The finest clothing made is a person’s own skin, but, of course, society demands something more than this.’ – Mark Twain

‘Better a broken promise than none at all.’ – Mark Twain

‘Words are only painted fire; a look is the fire itself.’ – Mark Twain

‘The wit knows that his place is at the tail of a procession.’ – Mark Twain

‘One of the most striking differences between a cat and a lie is that a cat has only nine lives.’ – Mark Twain

‘Let us make a special effort to stop communicating with each other, so we can have some conversation.’ – Mark Twain

‘It put our energies to sleep and made visionaries of us – dreamers and indolent… It is good to begin life poor; it is good to begin life rich – these are wholesome; but to begin it prospectively rich! The man who has not experienced it cannot imagine the curse of it.’ – Mark Twain

‘When a person cannot deceive himself the chances are against his being able to deceive other people.’ – Mark Twain

‘The secret source of humor is not joy but sorrow; there is no humor in Heaven.’ – Mark Twain

‘Humor must not professedly teach and it must not professedly preach, but it must do both if it would live forever.’ – Mark Twain

‘It is my belief that nearly any invented quotation, played with confidence, stands a good chance to deceive.’ – Mark Twain

‘I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did. I said I didn’t know.’ – Mark Twain

‘As an example to others, and not that I care for moderation myself, it has always been my rule never to smoke when asleep, and never to refrain from smoking when awake.’ – Mark Twain

‘George Washington, as a boy, was ignorant of the commonest accomplishments of youth. He could not even lie.’ – Mark Twain

‘Optimist: day dreamer more elegantly spelled.’ – Mark Twain

‘The secret of getting ahead is getting started.’ – Mark Twain

‘The lack of money is the root of all evil.’ – Mark Twain

‘Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured.’ – Mark Twain