Mark Twain Quotes (1103 Quotes)

Reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.

I could never learn to like her, except on a raft at sea with no other provisions in sight.

Some of his words were not Sunday-school words.

He does not care for flowers. Calls them rubbish, and cannot tell one from another, and thinks it is superior to feel like that.

The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them.

We must annex those people. We can afflict them with our wise and beneficent government. We can introduce the novelty of thieves, all the way up from street-car pickpockets to municipal robbers and Government defaulters, and show them how amusing it is to arrest them and try them and then turn them loose -- some for cash and some for ''political influence.'' We can make them ashamed of their simple and primitive justice. We can make that little bunch of sleepy islands the hottest corner on earth, and array it in the moral splendor of our high and holy civilization. Annexation is what the poor islanders need. ''Shall we to men benighted, the lamp of life deny''

Everything human is pathetic. The secret source of humor itself is not joy but sorrow. There is no humor in heaven.

I have been told that Wagner's music is better than it sounds.

Always obey your parents - when they are present.

But when the time comes that a man has had his dinner, then the true man comes to the surface

A crank is someone with a new idea -- until it catches on.

There is nothing so annoying as to have two people talking when you're busy interrupting.

What is human life The first third a good time the rest remembering about it

Action speaks louder than words but not nearly as often.

I don't give a damn for a man that can only spell a word one way.

There are those who would misteach us that to stick in a rut is consistency- and a virtue and that to climb out of the rut is inconsistency- and a vice

More than one cigar at a time is excessive smoking.

Nothing helps scenery like ham and eggs.

By trying we can easily endure adversity. Another man's, I mean.

Let us guess that whenever we read a sentence and like it, we unconsciously store it away in our model-chamber and it goes, with the myriad of its fellows, to the building, brick by brick, of the eventual edifice which we call our style

I don't know of a single foreign product that enters this country untaxed, except the answer to prayer.

If men bore children, there would only be one born in each family.

Troubles are only mental it is the mind that manufactures them, and the mind can gorge them, banish them, abolish them

Youth is wonderful. It's a shame to waste it on the young.

It is a pity that we cannot escape from life when we are young.

If man could be crossed with the cat, it would improve man but deteriorate the cat.

As I have said before, I never had any large respect for good spelling. That is my feeling yet. Before the spelling-book came with its arbitrary forms, men unconsciously revealed shades of their characters, and also added enlightening shades of expression to what they wrote by their spelling, and so it is possible that the spelling-book has been a doubtful benevolence to us.

The vast majority of the race, whether savage or civilized, are secretly kind-hearted and shrink from inflicting pain, but in the presence of the aggressive and pitiless minority they don't dare to assert themselves.

I said there was but one solitary thing about the past worth remembering and that was the fact that it is past - and can't be restored

Of all God's creatures there is only one that cannot be made the slave of the lash. That one is the cat. If man could be crossed with a cat it would improve man, but it would deteriorate the cat.

My memory was never loaded with anything but blank cartridges.

Diligence is a good thing, but taking things easy is much more restful

If there was two birds sitting on a fence, he would bet you which one would fly first.

Therein lies the defect of revenge it's all in the anticipation the thing itself is a pain, not a pleasure at least the pain is the biggest end of it.

. . . a man must not hold himself aloof from the things which his friends and his community have at heart if he would be liked . . .

It is nobler to be good, and it is nobler to teach others to be good -- and less trouble.

The average American girl possesses the valuable qualities of naturalness, honesty, and inoffensive straightforwardness she is nearly barren of troublesome conventions and artificialities consequently, her presence and her ways are unembarrassing,

I have seen slower people than I am and more deliberate... and even quieter, and more listless, and lazier people than I am. But they were dead.

Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness. Broad, wholesome, charitable views cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth.

Humor must not professedly teach and it must not professedly preach, but it must do both if it would live forever.

A baby is an inestimable blessing and bother.

For business reasons, I must preserve the outward signs of sanity.

Faith is believing what you know aint so.

Humor is mankind's greatest blessing.

Human nature is the same everywhere it deifies success, it has nothing but scorn for defeat.

What is there that confers the noblest delight What is that which swells a man's breast with pride above that which any other experience can bring to him Discovery To know that you are walking where none others have walked . . .

We all like to see people sea-sick when we are not ourselves.

To promise not to do a thing is the surest way in the world to make a body want to go and do that very thing.

There ought to be a room in every house to swear in

Lump the whole thing Say that the Creator made Italy from designs by Michael Angelo.