Mark Twain Quotes (1103 Quotes)

If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man.

His liberties were totally unrestricted, ... He was the only really independent person - boy or man - in the community, and by consequence he was tranquilly and continuously happy and envied by the rest of us.

Between us, we cover all knowledge he knows all that can be known and I know the rest.

Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand.

It was the schoolboy who said, Faith is believing what you know ain't so.

India is the cradle of the human race, the birthplace of human speech, the mother of history, the grandmother of legend, and the great grand mother of tradition. Our most valuable and most astrictive materials in the history of man are treasured up in India only

I have a higher and greater standard of principle. Washington could not lie. I can lie but I won't.

I can speak French but I cannot understand it.

Rail-splitting produced an unparalleled president in Lincoln. But gold hasn't produced even a good A-1 congressman.

Then away out in the woods I heard that kind of a sound that a ghost makes when it wants to tell about something that's on its mind and can't make itself understood, and so can't rest easy in its grave, and has to go about that way every night grieving.

The cat, having sat upon a hot stove lid, will not sit upon a hot stove lid again. But he won't sit upon a cold stove lid, either.

In God We Trust. I don't believe it would sound any better if it were true.

Everyone is like a moon, and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody.

I learned long ago never to say the obvious thing, but leave the obvious thing to commonplace and inexperienced people to say

When you cannot get a compliment in any other way pay yourself one.

The proper office of a friend is to side with you when you are wrong. Nearly anybody will side with you when you are right.

Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.

Morals consist of political morals, commercial morals, ecclesiastical morals, and morals.

There is nothing so annoying as a good example.

It's spring feveryou don't know quite what it is you want, but it just fairly makes your heart ache, you want it so.

I admire the serene assurance of those who have religious faith. It is wonderful to observe the calm confidence of a Christian with four aces.

What is the most rigorous law of our being Growth. No smallest atom of our moral, mental, or physical structure can stand still a year. It grows -- it must grow nothing can prevent it.

Under certain circumstances, profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer.

The Bible is a mass of fables and traditions, mere mythology

A group of men in evening clothes looks like a flock of crows, and is just about as inspiring.

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

Loyalty to petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul.

A man is accepted into a church for what he believes and he is turned out for what he knows

Familiarity breeds contempt. How accurate that is. The reason we hold truth in such respect is because we have so little opportunity to get familiar with it.

New Year's Day - Now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions. Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual.

It is a blessed thing to have an imagination that can always make you satisfied, no matter how you are fixed

It is a solemn thought Dead, the noblest man's meat is inferior to pork

No matter how healthy a man's morals may be when he enters the White House, he comes out again with a pot-marked soul

All you need is ignorance and confidence and the success is sure.

I was a-trembling because Id got to decide forever betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied for a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself, 'All right, then Ill go to hell.'

I have had an aversion to good spelling for sixty years and more, merely for the reason that when I was a boy there was not a thing I could do creditably except spell according to the book. It was a poor and mean distinction, and I early learned to disenjoy it. I suppose that this is because the ability to spell correctly is a talent, not an acquirement. There is some dignity about an acquirement, because it is a product of your own labor. It is wages earned, whereas to be able to do a thing merely by the grace of God, and not by your own effort, transfers the distinction to our heavenly home where possibly it is a matter of pride and satisfaction, but it leaves you naked and bankrupt.

Man - a creature made at the end of the week's work when God was tired.

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

Each man must for himself alone decide what is right and what is wrong, which course is patriotic and which isn't. You cannot shirk this and be a man. To decide against your conviction is to be an unqualified and excusable traitor, both to yourself and to your country, let them label you as they may.

Mauritius was made first, and then heaven and that heaven was copied after Mauritius.

A public library is the most enduring of memorials, the trustiest monument for the preservation of an event or a name or an affection for it, and it only, is respected by wars and revolutions, and survives them.

I should have been glad to acquire some sort of idea of Hindu theology, ... but the difficulties were too great.

We Americans... bear the ark of liberties of the world.

We Americans are the lavishest and showiest and most luxury-loving people on the earth and at our masthead we fly one true and honest symbol, the gaudiest flag the world has ever seen.

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.

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

Out of the unconscious lips of babes and sucklings are we satirized.

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

There isn't a single human characteristic that can be safely labeled as American.

If a person offends you, and you are in doubt as to whether it was intentional or not, do not resort to extreme measures simply watch your chance and hit him with a brick.