Mark Twain Quotes

I cannot help but notice that there is no problem between us that cannot be solved by your departure.

I like the truth sometimes, but I don't care enough for it to hanker after it.

Don't explain your author, read him right and he explains himself.

Figures don't lie, but liars figure.

There are 869 different forms of lying, but only one of them has been squarely forbidden. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.

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

To be satisfied with what one has; that is wealth.

The true charm of pedestrians does not lie in the walking, or in the scenery, but in the talking.

It is sound judgment to put on a bold face and play your hand for a hundred times what it is worth; forty-nine times out of fifty nobody dares to call it, and you roll in the chips.

Modesty died when clothes were born.

Until I came to New Mexico, I never realized how much beauty water adds to a river.

The radical of one century is the conservative of the next. The radical invents the views. When he has worn them out, the conservative adopt.

There are no grades of vanity; there are only grades of ability in concealing it.

All good things arrive unto them that wait - and don't die in the meantime.

An injurious lie is an uncommendable thing; and so, also, and in the same degree, is an injurious truth a fact that is recognized by the law of libel .

We can't reach old age by another man's road.

When a person cannot deceive himself the chances are against his being able to deceive other people.

Prosperity is the best protector of principle.

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

I wish I could make him understand that a loving good heart is riches enough, and that without it intellect is poverty.

The institution of royalty in any form is an insult to the human race.

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

Buy land, they're not making it anymore.

If you can't get a compliment any other way, pay yourself one.

In a museum in Havana, there are two skulls of Christopher Columbus, one when he was a boy and one when he was a man

Quitting smoking is easy, I've done it hundreds of times.

Love your enemy, it will scare the hell out of them.

I've never let my school interfere with my education.

I ordinarily smoke fifteen cigars during my five hours' labours, and if my interest reaches the enthusiastic point, I smoke more. I smoke with all my might, and allow no intervals.

...nothing so liberalizes a man and expands the kindly instincts that nature put in him as travel and contact with many kinds of people.

If you don't like the weather in New England now, just wait a few minutes.

Blasphemy? No, it is not blashphemy. If God is as vast as that, he is above blasphemy; if he is as little as that, He is beneath it.

Life is but a dream, a grotesque and foolish dream.

It is a gratification to me to know that I am ignorant of art... Because people who understand art find nothing in pictures but blemishes.

I would like to live in Manchester, England. The transition between Manchester and death would be unnoticeable.

Do not undervalue the headache. While it is at its sharpest it seems a bad investment; but when relief begins, the unexpired remainder is worth $4 a minute.

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

No church property is taxed and so the infidel and the atheist and the man without religion are taxed to make up the deficit.

In statesmanship get formalities right, never mind about the moralities.

We are all ignorant; just about different things.

It's easy to endure adversity -- if it happens to someone else.

Right is right, and wrong is wrong, and a body ain’t got no business doing wrong when he ain’t ignorant and knows better.

Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand.

In the Spring, I have counted 136 different kinds of weather inside of 24 hours.

The Indian may seem poor to we rich Westerners but in matters of the spirit it is we who are the paupers and they who are millionaires.

In a good bookroom you feel in some mysterious way that you are absorbing the wisdom contained in all the books through your skin, without even opening them.

There is nothing training can't cannot do. Nothing is above its reach.

The right word may be effective, but no word was ever as effective as a rightly timed pause.

The gods offer no rewards for intellect. There was never one yet that showed any interest in it.

Praise is well, compliment is well, but affection-that is the last and most precious reward that any man can win, whether by character or achievement.