Mark Twain: Trending quotes

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Mark Twain: 1274 quotes808 likes

“To put it in rude, plain, unpalatable words — true patriotism, real patriotism: loyalty not to a Family and a Fiction, but a loyalty to the Nation itself!
…"Remember this, take this to heart, live by it, die for it if necessary: that our patriotism is medieval, outworn, obsolete; that the modern patriotism, the true patriotism, the only rational patriotism, is loyalty to the Nation ALL the time, loyalty to the Government when it deserves it."”

Mark Twain

Czar Nicholas II
1905
Collected Tales, Sketches, Speeches, & Essays, 1891-1910 (1992) ed. Louis J. Budd

“[William Dean] Howells applauded, and was full of praises and endorsement, which was wise in him and judicious. If he had manifested a different spirit I would have thrown him out of the window. I like criticism, but it must be my way.”

Mark Twain

Source: Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 1 (2010), p. 441

“Man is a Religious Animal. He is the only Religious Animal. He is the only animal that has the True Religion — several of them. He is the only animal that loves his neighbor as himself and cuts his throat if his theology isn't straight.”

Mark Twain

"Man's Place in the Animal World" (1869)

“You cannot lay bare your private soul and look at it. You are too much ashamed of yourself. It is too disgusting. For that reason I confine myself to drawing the portraits of others.”

Mark Twain

Source: Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 1 (2010), p. 16

“The silent colossal National Lie that is the support and confederate of all the tyrannies and shams and inequalities and unfairnesses that afflict the peoples — that is the one to throw bricks and sermons at.”

Mark Twain

"My First Lie, and How I Got Out of It" http://www.mtwain.com/My_First_Lie,_And_How_I_Got_Out_Of_It/0.html, in The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg and Other Stories and Essays (1900)

“To create man was a fine and original idea; but to add the sheep was a tautology.”

Mark Twain

St. Louis Post-Dispatch (30 May 1902); also in Mark Twain : A Life, p. 611

“Some men worship rank, some worship heroes, some worship power, some worship God, & over these ideals they dispute & cannot unite — but they all worship money.”

Mark Twain

Source: Mark Twain's Notebook (1935), p. 343

“…. it is not wise to keep the fire going under a slander unless you can get some large advantage out of keeping it alive. Few slanders can stand the wear of silence.”

Mark Twain

Source: Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 1 (2010), p. 161

“How easy it is to make people believe a lie, and [how] hard it is to undo that work again!”

Mark Twain

Misquote: It's easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.
Source: Autobiography of Mark Twain, Vol. 2 (2013), p. 302

“Tom appeared on the sidewalk with a bucket of whitewash and a long-handled brush. He surveyed the fence, and all gladness left him and a deep melancholy settled down upon his spirit. Thirty yards of board fence nine feet high. Life to him seemed hollow, and existence but a burden.”

Mark Twain book The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

Source: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876), Ch. 2

“Man will do many things to get himself loved; he will do all things to get himself envied.”

Mark Twain book Following the Equator

Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar, Ch. XXI
Following the Equator (1897)
Variant: Man will do many things to get himself loved, he will do all things to get himself envied.

“There is nothing in the world like a persuasive speech to fuddle the mental apparatus and upset the convictions and debauch the emotions of an audience not practised in the tricks and delusions of oratory.”

Mark Twain book The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg

"The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg", ch. III, in The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg and Other Stories and Essays (1900)

“I wanted to damage every man in the place, and every woman--and not in their bodies or in their estate, but in their vanity--the place where feeble and foolish people are most vulnerable. So I disguised myself and came back and studied you. You were easy game. You had an old and lofty reputation for honesty, and naturally you were proud of it — it was your treasure of treasures, the very apple of your eye. As soon as I found out that you carefully and vigilantly kept yourselves and your children out of temptation, I knew how to proceed. Why, you simple creatures, the weakest of all weak things is a virtue which has not been tested in the fire.”

Mark Twain book The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg

"The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg", ch. III, in The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg and Other Stories and Essays (1900)

“Prosperity is the best protector of principle.”

Mark Twain book Following the Equator

Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar, Ch. II ; as cited in Mark Twain at your Fingertips https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/0486473198: A Book of Quotations, ed. Caroline Thomas Hornsberger, Courier Corp. (2009), p. 385 <br class="br">Following the Equator (1897)

“…now…that I am a wise person. As for me, I wish there were some more of us in the world, for I find it lonesome.”

Mark Twain

Source: Autobiography of Mark Twain, Vol. 2 (2013), p. 281

““[W]e consciously or unconsciously pay more attention to tuning our opinions to our neighbor’s pitch and preserving his approval than we do to examining the opinions searchingly and seeing to it that they are right and sound.”

Mark Twain

"The Privilege of the Grave" (1905)

“In grandchildren I am the richest man that lives to-day: for I select my grandchildren, whereas all other grandfathers have to take them as they come, good, bad, and indifferent.”

Mark Twain

Source: Autobiography of Mark Twain, Vol. 3 (2015), p. 219, of his "angel-fishes"—girls between the ages of ten and sixteen whom he befriended after the death of his wife

“The minister gave out his text and droned along monotonously through an argument that was so prosy that many a head by and by began to nod — and yet it was an argument that dealt in limitless fire and brimstone and thinned the predestined elect down to a company so small as to be hardly worth the saving.”

Mark Twain book The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

Source: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876), Ch. 5

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

Mark Twain

Unsourced in POP!: Create the Perfect Pitch, Title, and Tagline for Anything (2006) by Sam Horn.
Disputed

“I have no special regard for Satan; but, I can at least claim that I have no prejudice against him. It may even be that I lean a little his way, on account of his not having a fair show. All religions issue bibles against him, and say the most injurious things about him, but we never hear his side. We have none but the evidence for the prosecution, and yet we have rendered the verdict. To my mind, this is irregular. It is un-English, it is un-American; it is French.”

Mark Twain book Concerning the Jews

Concerning the Jews (Harper's Magazine, Sept. 1899)