“The most interesting information come from children, for they tell all they know and then stop.”
Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist
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@xy, member from Sept. 25, 2023“Heaven goes by favor. If it went by merit, you would stay out and your dog would go in.”
Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist
“I must have a prodigious quantity of mind; it takes me as much as a week sometimes to make it up.”
Mark Twain book The Innocents Abroad
Source: The Innocents Abroad (1869), Ch. 7
“When angry, count four. When very angry, swear.”
Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist
“Out of all the things I have lost, I miss my mind the most.”
Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist
“Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.”
Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist
“A clear conscience is the sure sign of a bad memory.”
Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist
“Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please.”
Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist
As quoted in "An Interview with Mark Twain" http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/k/kipling/rudyard/seatosea/chapter37.html, From Sea to Sea: Letters of Travel (1899) by Rudyard Kipling, Ch. 37, p. 180 <br class="br">Commonly paraphrased as: "First get your facts, then you can distort them at your leisure."
“History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme.”
Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist
Origins unclear. Earliest known match in print comes from 1970, in a collection called “Neo Poems” by Canadian artist John Robert Colombo, who recalled reading it sometime in the 1960s. Twain did say "History never repeats itself, but the Kaleidoscopic combinations of the pictured present often seem to be constructed out of the broken fragments of antique legends." in the 1874 edition of “The Gilded Age: A Tale of To-Day”. A thematic precursor, "History May Not Repeat, But It Looks Alike", appears in a 1941 article by Chicago Tribune in Illinois. (Source: Quote Investigator https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/01/12/history-rhymes/) <br class="br">Misattributed
“All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence, and then Success is sure.”
Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist
Mark Twain's Notebook, 1887 <br class="br">Letter to Cordelia Welsh Foote (Cincinnati), 2 December 1887. Letter reprinted http://www.twainquotes.com/Success.html in Benjamin De Casseres's When Huck Finn Went Highbrow https://www.worldcat.org/title/when-huck-finn-went-highbrow/oclc/2514292 (1934)
Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist
marginal note in Moncure D. Conway's Sacred Anthology
quoted by Albert Bigelow Paine in Mark Twain: A Biography (1912)
“Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see.”
Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist
Unsourced in The Philosophy of Mark Twain: The Wit and Wisdom of a Literary Genius (2014) by David Graham
Disputed
“Always do what is right. It will gratify half of mankind and astound the other.”
Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist
To the Young People's Society, Greenpoint Presbyterian Church, Brooklyn (February 16, 1901).
Variant: Always do right. This will gratify some people, and astonish the rest.
“You can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.”
Mark Twain book A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
Ch. 43 http://www.literature.org/authors/twain-mark/connecticut/chapter-43.html <br class="br">Source: A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889)
“Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.”
Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist
More Maxims of Mark (1927) edited by Merle Johnson
Variant: Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.