Mark Twain Quotes

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637 Wit, Wisdom, and Humor to Inspire and Entertain

“This last summer, when I was on my way back to Vienna from the Appetite-Cure in the mountains, I fell over a cliff in the twilight, and broke some arms and legs and one thing or another, and by good luck was found by some peasants who had lost an ass, and they carried me to the nearest habitation, which was one of those large, low, thatch-roofed farm-houses, with apartments in the garret for the family, and a cunning little porch under the deep gable decorated with boxes of bright colored flowers and cats; on the ground floor a large and light sitting-room, separated from the milch-cattle apartment by a partition; and in the front yard rose stately and fine the wealth and pride of the house, the manure-pile. That sentence is Germanic, and shows that I am acquiring that sort of mastery of the art and spirit of the language which enables a man to travel all day in one sentence without changing cars.”

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

“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.”

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

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

“God created war so that Americans would learn geography.”

“I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did. I said I didn’t know.”

“But who prays for Satan? Who, in eighteen centuries, has had the common humanity to pray for the one sinner that needed it most?”

“The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter—'tis the difference between the lightning-bug and the lightning.”

“Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't.”

“I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.”

“Don't part with your illusions. When they are gone you may still exist but you have ceased to live.”

“Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.”

“You can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.”

“Always do what is right. It will gratify half of mankind and astound the other.”

“Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see.”

“Name the greatest of all inventors. Accident.”

“The easy confidence with which I know another man's religion is folly teaches me to suspect that my own is also.”

“All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence, and then Success is sure.”

“History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme.”

“Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please.”

“A clear conscience is the sure sign of a bad memory.”

“Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.”

“Out of all the things I have lost, I miss my mind the most.”

“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.”

“When angry, count four. When very angry, swear.”

“Any emotion, if it is sincere, is involuntary.”

“Of all the animals, man is the only one that is cruel. He is the only one that inflicts pain for the pleasure of doing it.”

“I must have a prodigious quantity of mind; it takes me as much as a week sometimes to make it up.”

“Heaven goes by favor. If it went by merit, you would stay out and your dog would go in.”

“It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world, and moral courage so rare.”

“After all these years, I see that I was mistaken about Eve in the beginning; it is better to live outside the Garden with her than inside it without her.”

“When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained.”

“The human race has only one really effective weapon and that is laughter.”

“Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured.”

“Adam was but human—this explains it all. He did not want the apple for the apple's sake, he wanted it only because it was forbidden. The mistake was in not forbidding the serpent; then he would have eaten the serpent.”

“The Bible has noble poetry in it… and some good morals and a wealth of obscenity, and upwards of a thousand lies.”

“Always acknowledge a fault frankly. This will throw those in authority off their guard and give you opportunity to commit more.”

“The dog is a gentleman; I hope to go to his heaven not man's.”

“There is a charm about the forbidden that makes it unspeakably desirable.”

“Of all God's creatures, there is only one that cannot be made slave of the leash. That one is the cat. If man could be crossed with the cat it would improve the man, but it would deteriorate the cat.”

“I have a higher and grander standard of principle than George Washington. He could not lie; I can, but I won't.”

“Eat a live frog first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day.”

“Reality can be beaten with enough imagination.”

“If voting made any difference they wouldn't let us do it.”

“I've had a lot of worries in my life, most of which never happened.”

“Part of the secret of success in life is to eat what you like and let the food fight it out inside.”

“Education consists mainly in what we have unlearned.”

“There are many humorous things in the world; among them, the white man's notion that he is less savage than the other savages.”