Mark Twain Quotes

In Boston they ask, how much does he know? In New York, how much is he worth? In Philadelphia, who were his parents?

Often the surest way to convey misinformation is to tell the strict truth.

A little lie can travel half way 'round the world while Truth is still lacing up her boots.

The fact that man knows right from wrong proves his intellectual superiority to the other creatures; but the fact that he can do wrong proves his moral inferiority to any creatures that cannot.

Be respectful to your superiors, if you have any.

Some people give their problems swimming lessons instead of drowning them.

Where a blood relation sobs, an intimate friend should choke up, a distant acquaintance should sigh, a stranger should merely fumble sympathetically with his handkerchief.

A person with a new idea is a crank until the idea succeeds.

I have found out that there ain't no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than to travel with them.

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

I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it.

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

If there is a God, he is a malign thug.

Man is the only animal that deals in that atorcity of atrocities, War. He is the only one that gathers his brethren about him and goes forth in cold blood and calm pulse to exterminate his kind.

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

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

I don't see any use in having a uniform and arbitrary way of spelling words. We might as well make all clothes alike and cook all dishes alike. Sameness is tiresome; variety is pleasing.

Some people bring joy wherever they go, and some people bring joy whenever they go.

Consider the average intelligence of the common man, then realize 50% are even stupider.

There is no such thing as a new idea. We simply take a lot of old ideas and put them into a sort of mental kaleidoscope.

Courage is not the absence of fear, but the mastery of it.

There are laws to protect the freedom of the press's speech, but none that are worth anything to protect the people from the press

Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.

You can't break a bad habit by throwing it out the window. You've got to walk it slowly down the stairs.

There comes a time in every rightly constructed boy's life when he has a raging desire to go somewhere and dig for hidden treasure.

Those that respect the law and love sausage should watch neither being made.

Love seems the swiftest, but it is the slowest of all growths. No man or woman really knows what perfect love is until they have been married a quarter of a century.

Most people are bothered by those passages of Scripture they do not understand, but the passages that bother me are those I do understand.

The older I get, the more clearly I remember things that never happened.

Only he who has seen better days and lives to see better days again knows their full value.

The very ink with which history is written is merely fluid prejudice.

Stripping away the irrational, the illogical, and the impossible, I am left with atheism. I can live with that.

It's spring fever. That is what the name of it is. And when you've got it, you want—oh, you don't quite know what it is you do want, but it just fairly makes your heart ache, you want it so!

A successful book is not made of what is in it, but what is left out of it.

The Mississippi River will always have its own way; no engineering skill can persuade it to do otherwise.

It used to be a good hotel, but that proves nothing - I used to be a good boy.

Never let the truth get in the way of a good story.

It's lovely to live on a raft. We had the sky up there, all speckled with stars, and we used to lay on our backs and look up at them, and discuss about whether they was made or only just happened.

An American has not seen the United States until he has seen Mardi-Gras in New Orleans.

I am content to be a bric-a-bracker and a Ceramiker.

I smoke in moderation. Only one cigar at a time.

I thoroughly disapprove of duels. If a man should challenge me, I would take him kindly and forgivingly by the hand and lead him to a quiet place and kill him.

I wonder how much it would take to buy a soap bubble, if there were only one in the world.

Ignorance, intolerance, egotism, self-assertion, opaque perception, dense and pitiful chuckle headedness - and an almost pathetic unconsciousness of it all, that is what I was at nineteen and twenty.

We have not all had the good fortune to be ladies. We have not all been generals, or poets, or statesmen; but when the toast works down to the babies, we stand on common ground.

Nothing spoils a good story like the arrival of an eyewitness.

Nearly all black and brown skins are beautiful, but a beautiful white skin is rare.

Satan (impatiently) to Newcomer: The trouble with you Chicago people is, that you think you are the best people down here; whereas you are merely the most numerous.

Worrying is paying interest on a debt you might not even owe.

Loyalty to the country always. Loyalty to the government when it deserves it.