Mark Twain: Trending quotes (page 31)

Mark Twain trending quotes. Read the latest quotes in collection
Mark Twain: 1274   quotes 796   likes

“I did not attend his funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it.”

Mark Twain

Variant: I didn’t attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying that I approved of it.

Funny

“Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.”

Mark Twain

Draft manuscript (c.1881), quoted by Albert Bigelow Paine in Mark Twain: A Biography (1912), p. 724 http://books.google.com/books?id=2UYLAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA724#v=onepage&q&f=false
Variant: Suppose you were an idiot, and suppose you were a member of Congress; but I repeat myself.

Funny

“Substitute 'damn' every time you're inclined to write 'very;' your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.”

Mark Twain
Time

“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.”

Mark Twain
Wise , Wisdom , Books , Way

“A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.”

Mark Twain

Variant: A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.

Truth , Lie , World , Shoe

“A God who could make good children as easily as bad, yet preferred to make bad ones; who could have made every one of them happy, yet never made a single happy one; who made them prize their bitter life, yet stingily cut it short; who gave his angels eternal happiness unearned, yet required his other children to earn it; who gave his angels painless lives, yet cursed his other children with biting miseries and maladies of mind and body; who mouths justice, and invented hell — mouths mercy, and invented hell — mouths Golden Rules and forgiveness multiplied by seventy times seven, and invented hell; who mouths morals to other people, and has none himself; who frowns upon crimes, yet commits them all; who created man without invitation, then tries to shuffle the responsibility for man's acts upon man, instead of honorably placing it where it belongs, upon himself; and finally, with altogether divine obtuseness, invites his poor abused slave to worship him!”

Mark Twain book The Mysterious Stranger

The Mysterious Stranger (1916)

Life , God , Children , People

“The minority is always in the right. The majority is always in the wrong.”

Mark Twain

Attributed to Twain, but never sourced. Suspiciously close to "A minority may be right, and the majority is always in the wrong." — Henrik Ibsen "Enemy of the People," as well as a famous quote from Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard
Misattributed

“It is not worth while to try to keep history from repeating itself, for man's character will always make the preventing of the repetitions impossible.”

Mark Twain

Mark Twain in Eruption: Hitherto Unpublished Pages About Men and Events (1940) edited by Bernard DeVoto

History

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”

Mark Twain

This quote has been attributed to Mark Twain, but the attribution cannot be verified. The quote should not be regarded as authentic. — Twainquotes http://www.twainquotes.com/Discovery.html
Actually from the 1990 book P. S. I Love You' https://books.google.com/books?id=5OORXU6rlGIC&q=bowlines#v=onepage&q=bowlines&f=false' by H. Jackson Brown.
Misattributed

Courageous , Success , Life , Dreams

“An honest politician is an oxymoron.”

Mark Twain

“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.”

Mark Twain
Love , Star

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

Mark Twain

Source: The Diary of Adam and Eve

Love , Understanding , Heart

“When a man loves cats, I am his friend and comrade, without further introduction.”

Mark Twain

Source: Who Is Mark Twain?

Love , Cats

“A home without a cat — and a well-fed, well-petted and properly revered cat — may be a perfect home, perhaps, but how can it prove title?”

Mark Twain book Pudd'nhead Wilson

Source: Pudd'nhead Wilson

Home , Cats , Perfection

“It's not the size of the dog in the fight; it's the size of the fight in the dog.”

Mark Twain

Anonymous American proverb; since 1998 this has often been attributed to Mark Twain on the internet, but no contemporary evidence of him ever using it has been located.
Variants:
It is not the size of the dog in the fight that counts, but the fight in the dog that matters.
"Stub Ends of Thoughts" by Arthur G. Lewis, a collection of sayings, in Book of the Royal Blue Vol. 14, No. 7 (April 1911), cited as the earliest known occurrence in The Dictionary of Modern Proverbs, edited by Charles Clay Doyle, Wolfgang Mieder, and Fred R. Shapiro, p. 232
It is not the size of the dog in the fight that counts, but the fight in the dog that wins.
Anonymous quote in the evening edition of the East Oregonian (20 April 1911)
What counts is not necessarily the size of the dog in the fight — it's the size of the fight in the dog.
Dwight D. Eisenhower, declaring his particular variant on the proverbial assertion in Remarks at Republican National Committee Breakfast (31 January 1958) http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=11229
Misattributed

Courageous , Attitude , Dogs , Fight