Mark Twain Quotes

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637 Wit, Wisdom, and Humor to Inspire and Entertain

“Peace by persuasion has a pleasant sound, but I think we should not be able to work it. We should have to tame the human race first, and history seems to show that that cannot be done.”

“Get a bicycle. You will not regret it, if you live.”

“The more things are forbidden, the more popular they become.”

“I do not like work even when someone else is doing it.”

“Never have a battle of wits with an unarmed person.”

“If everyone was satisfied with himself, there would be no heroes.”

“Focus more on your desire than on your doubt, and the dream will take care of itself.”

“One frequently only finds out how really beautiful a women is, until
after considerable acquaintance with her.”

“Nothing so needs reforming as other people's habits.”

“The holy passion of Friendship is of so sweet and steady and loyal and enduring a nature that it will last through a whole lifetime, if not asked to lend money.”

“I don't like to commit myself about Heaven and Hell, you see, I have friends in both places.”

“Nature knows no indecencies; man invents them.”

“Sometimes you gwyne to git hurt, en sometimes you gwyne to git sick; but every time you's gwyne to git well agin.”

“I once sent a dozen of my friends a telegram saying 'flee at once - all is discovered.' They all left town immediately.”

“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?”

“It ain't the parts of the Bible that I can't understand that bother me, it's the parts that I do understand.”

“Herodotus says, "Very few things happen at the right time, and the rest do not happen at all. The conscientious historian will correct these defects."”

“How little a thing can make us happy when we feel that we have earned it.”

“There are some few people I respect and admire, but I don't think much of the species.”

“Stars and shadows ain't good to see by.”

“Humor is tragedy plus time.”

“If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed.”

“Drawing on my fine command of language, I said nothing.”

“You can't pray a lie -- I found that out.”

“To believe yourself brave is to be brave; it is the one only essential thing.”

“Never let the truth get in the way of a good story.”

“The proper office of a friend is to side with you when you are in the wrong. Nearly anybody will side with you when you are in the right.”

“Wit is the sudden marriage of ideas which before their union were not perceived to have any relation.”

“Human pride is not worthwhile; there is always something lying in wait to take the wind out of it.”

“Nothing exists but you. And you are but a thought.”

“The average man don't like trouble and danger.”

“The test of any good fiction is that you should care something for the characters; the good to succeed, the bad to fail. The trouble with most fiction is that you want them all to land in hell together, as quickly as possible.”

“Words are only painted fire, a look is the fire itself. She gave that look, and carried it away to the treasury of heaven, where all things that are divine belong.”

“Man - a figment of God's imagination.”

“The trouble ain't that there is too many fools, but that the lightning ain't distributed right.”

“There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.”

“How often we recall with regret that Napoleon once shot at a magazine editor and missed him and killed a publisher. But we remember with charity that his intentions were good.”

“He was sunshine most always-I mean he made it seem like good weather.”

“Work like you don't need the money. Dance like no one is watching. And love like you've never been hurt.”

“Everytime I read 'Pride and Prejudice' I want to dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone.”

“One should never use exclamation points in writing. It is like laughing at your own joke.”

“Love seems the swiftest, but it is the slowest of all growths. No man or woman really knows what perfect love is until they have been married a quarter of a century.”

“I don't see any use in having a uniform and arbitrary way of spelling words. We might as well make all clothes alike and cook all dishes alike. Sameness is tiresome; variety is pleasing.”

“I don't want no better book than what your face is.”

“It is sound judgment to put on a bold face and play your hand for a hundred times what it is worth; forty-nine times out of fifty nobody dares to call it, and you roll in the chips.”

“I am a great and sublime fool. But then I am God's fool, and all His works must be contemplated with respect.”

“Really great people make you feel that you, too, can become great.”

“Ah, that shows you the power of music, that magician of magician, who lifts his wand and says his mysterious word and all things real pass away and the phantoms of your mind walk before you clothed in flesh.”

“The trouble with the world is not that people know too little; it's that they know so many things that just aren't so.”