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Mark Twain Quotes
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637 Wit, Wisdom, and Humor to Inspire and Entertain

Discover the wit and wisdom of Mark Twain, America's beloved author. From inspiring success to clever human insights, our quotes capture Twain's humor and brilliance, inspiring and entertaining you.

Mark Twain, born Samuel Langhorne Clemens, was an acclaimed American writer and humorist. He is known as the "greatest humorist the United States has produced" and was hailed by William Faulkner as the "father of American literature". Twain's notable works include The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, and Pudd'nhead Wilson. Additionally, he co-wrote The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today with Charles Dudley Warner.

Raised in Hannibal, Missouri, Twain drew inspiration from his hometown for his famous novels. Before finding success as an author, he worked as a printer and typesetter and contributed articles to his brother's newspaper. Twain later became a renowned riverboat pilot on the Mississippi River before venturing west to join his brother in Nevada. His early journalism career included writing for the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise. It was there that he gained international recognition with his humorous story "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County". Known for his wit and satire, Twain garnered praise from critics and influential figures alike. Despite facing financial difficulties due to unsuccessful investments, including one in a mechanical typesetter called Paige Compositor, Twain eventually paid off all his debts. Interestingly, he predicted that he would die when Halley's Comet returned; true to his words, he passed away a day after the comet's closest approach to Earth.

✵ 30. November 1835 – 21. April 1910   •   Other names Samuel Langhorne Clemens
Mark Twain photo
Mark Twain: 637   quotes 795   likes

Mark Twain Quotes

“The best known names in the Territory of Nevada were those belonging to these long-tailed heroes of the revolver. Orators, Governors, capitalists and leaders of the legislature enjoyed a degree of fame, but it seemed local and meagre when contrasted with the fame of such men as Sam Brown, Jack Williams, Billy Mulligan, Farmer Pease, Sugarfoot Mike, Pock-Marked Jake, El Dorado Johnny, Jack McNabb, Joe McGee, Jack Harris, Six-fingered Pete, etc., etc.”

Mark Twain book Roughing It

Chapter XLVIII, p. 344 https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=coo1.ark:/13960/t0xp7k74t&view=1up&seq=364' (published 1872)
Roughing It (1872)

Men

“For many years I believed that I remembered helping my grandfather drink his whisky toddy when I was six weeks old, but I do not tell about that any more, now; I am grown old, and my memory is not as active as it used to be. When I was younger I could remember anything, whether it had happened or not; but my faculties are decaying, now, and soon I shall be so I cannot remember any but the latter. It is sad to go to pieces like this, but we all have to do it.”

Mark Twain

Source: Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 1 (2010), p. 210

Help , Sadness , Drink , Memory

“When Adam ate the apple in the Garden and learned how to multiply and replenish, the other animals learned the Art, too, by watching Adam. It was cunning of them, it was neat; for they got all that was worth having out of the apple without tasting it and afflicting themselves with the disastrous Moral Sense, the parent of all the immoralities.”

Mark Twain book Letters from the Earth

Letters from the Earth (1909)

Affliction , Learning , Art , Animals

“From the time a woman is seven years old till she dies of old age, she is ready for action, and competent. As competent as the candlestick to receive the candle. But man is only briefly competent:…After fifty his performance is of poor quality; the intervals between are wide, and its satisfactions of no great quality to either party; whereas his great-grandmother is as good as new.”

Mark Twain book Letters from the Earth

Letters from the Earth (1909)

Time , Age

“This is indeed India! the land of dreams and romance, of fabulous wealth and fabulous poverty, of splendor and rags, of palaces and hovels, of famine and pestilence, of genii and giants and Aladdin lamps, of tigers and elephants, the cobra and the jungle, the country of a hundred nations and a hundred tongues, of a thousand religions and two million gods, cradle of the human race, birthplace of human speech, mother of history, grandmother of legend, great-grandmother of tradition, whose yesterdays bear date with the mouldering antiquities of the rest of the nations — the one sole country under the sun that is endowed with an imperishable interest for alien prince and alien peasant, for lettered and ignorant, wise and fool, rich and poor, bond and free, the one land that all men desire to see, and having seen once, by even a glimpse, would not give that glimpse for the shows of all the rest of the globe combined. Even now, after the lapse of a year, the delirium of those days in Bombay has not left me, and I hope never will.”

Mark Twain book Following the Equator

Ch. XXXVIII http://www.gutenberg.org/files/5811/5811-h/5811-h.htm
Following the Equator (1897)

God , Religion , History , Country

“So far as I am able to judge, nothing has been left undone, either by man or Nature, to make India the most extraordinary country that the sun visits on his round. Nothing seems to have been forgotten, nothing overlooked.”

Mark Twain book Following the Equator

Ch. LVII http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2895/2895-h/p6.htm
Following the Equator (1897)

Sun , Making love , Country , Nature

“A critic never made or killed a book or a play. The people themselves are the final judges. It is their opinion that counts. After all, the final test is truth. But the trouble is that most writers regard truth as their most valuable possession and therefore are most economical in its use.”

Mark Twain

Said to portrait painter Samuel Johnson Woolf, cited in Here am I (1941), Samuel Johnson Woolf; this has often been abbreviated: Most writers regard truth as their most valuable possession, and therefore are most economical in its use.

Truth , Books , People

“Your race, in its poverty, has unquestionably one really effective weapon—laughter. Power, Money, Persuasion, Supplication, Persecution—these can lift at a colossal humbug,—push it a little—crowd it a little—weaken it a little, century by century: but only Laughter can blow it to rags and atoms at a blast. Against the assault of Laughter nothing can stand.”

Mark Twain

"The Chronicle of Young Satan" (ca. 1897–1900, unfinished), published posthumously in Mark Twain's Mysterious Stranger Manuscripts (1969), ed. William Merriam Gibson ( pp. 165–166 http://books.google.com/books?id=LDvA2xcYZKcC&pg=PA165 in the 2005 paperback printing, ISBN 0520246950)

Money , Laughter

“Well, then, says I, what's the use you learning to do right when it's troublesome to do right and ain't no trouble to do wrong, and the wages is just the same? I was stuck. I couldn't answer that. So I reckoned I wouldn't bother no more about it, but after this always do whichever come handiest at the time.”

Mark Twain book Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Source: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885), Ch. 16

Time , Learning

“Go to heaven for the climate, hell for the company.”

Mark Twain

https://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/07/19/heaven-for-climate/

Funny , Hell

“The ancients stole all our great ideas.”

Mark Twain

Attested at least in 1780 https://books.google.ru/books?id=nUpWAAAAYAAJ&q=Ancients&pg=PA32 (by John Hope):

Now, the Devil confound those Ancients, for they have stolen all my good thoughts from me!
Misattributed

Idea

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do.”

Mark Twain
Disappointment , Inspirational , Deep , Courageous

“There are basically two types of people. People who accomplish things, and people who claim to have accomplished things. The first group is less crowded.”

Mark Twain
People , For Team

“In God We Trust.”

Mark Twain

It is the choicest compliment that has ever been paid us, and the most gratifying to our feelings. It is simple, direct, gracefully phrased: it always sounds well — In God We Trust. I don't believe it would sound any better if it were true. And in a measure it is true — half the nation trusts in Him. That half has decided it.
Source: Mark Twain's Notebook (1935), p. 394

God

“The only reason why God created man is because he was disappointed with the monkey.”

Mark Twain

Autobiographical Dictation (1906)

God , Disappointment

“Don't believe the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.”

Mark Twain

Misattributed
Source: Often attributed to Twain, but sourced to Robert J. Burdette, Quote Investigator http://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/06/06/world-owes/

World

“The glory which is built upon a lie soon becomes a most unpleasant incumbrance. ... How easy it is to make people believe a lie, and how hard it is to undo that work again!”

Mark Twain

Source: Autobiographical dictation, 2 December 1906. Published in Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 2 (University of California Press, 2013)

People , Lie

“If the statistics are right, the Jews constitute but one percent of the human race. It suggests a nebulous dim puff of star dust lost in the blaze of the Milky Way. Properly the Jew ought hardly to be heard of, but he is heard of, has always been heard of. He is as prominent on the planet as any other people, and his commercial importance is extravagantly out of proportion to the smallness of his bulk. His contributions to the world's list of great names in literature, science, art, music, finance, medicine, and abstruse learning are also away out of proportion to the weakness of his numbers. He has made a marvellous fight in the world, in all the ages; and has done it with his hands tied behind him. He could be vain of himself, and be excused for it. The Egyptian, the Babylonian, and the Persian rose, filled the planet with sound and splendor, then faded to dream-stuff and passed away; the Greek and the Roman followed, and made a vast noise, and they are gone; other peoples have sprung up and held their torch high for a time, but it burned out, and they sit in twilight now, or have vanished. The Jew saw them all, beat them all, and is now what he always was, exhibiting no decadence, no infirmities of age, no weakening of his parts, no slowing of his energies, no dulling of his alert and aggressive mind. All things are mortal but the Jew; all other forces pass, but he remains. What is the secret of his immortality?”

Mark Twain book Concerning the Jews

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

People , Secret , Age , World