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
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Mark Twain Quotes

“It may be called the Master Passion—the hunger for Self-Approval.”

Source: What Is Man? (1906), Ch. 6

“We haven't all had the good fortune to be ladies; we haven't all been generals, or poets, or statesmen; but when the toast works down to the babies, we stand on common ground.”

Answering a toast, "To the Babies," at a banquet in honor of General U.S. Grant (November 14, 1879).
The Writings of Mark Twain, Vol. 20 (1899), ed. Charles Dudley Warner, p. 397 http://books.google.com/books?id=mRARAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA397

“This poor little one-horse town.”

"The Undertaker's Chat", first published as "A Reminiscence of the Back Settlements" in The Galaxy, Vol. 10, No. 5, November 1870 http://books.google.com/books?id=2TIZAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA731. Anthologized in Mark Twain's Sketches, New and Old‎ http://books.google.com/books?id=5LcIAAAAQAAJ (1875)

“Often, the surest way to convey misinformation is to tell the strict truth.”

Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar, Ch. LIX
Following the Equator (1897)

“Virtue never has been as respectable as money.”

Ch. 54 http://books.google.com/books?id=XX-wAAAAIAAJ&q="Virtue+never+has+been+as+respectable+as+money"&pg=PA589#v=onepage
The Innocents Abroad (1869)

“He was ignorant of the commonest accomplishments of youth. He could not even lie.”

"Brief Biographical Sketch of George Washington", The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, and Other Sketches http://books.google.com/books?id=kqMDAAAAQAAJ (1867), ed. John Paul
Cited by: William E. Phipps, Mark Twain's Religion https://books.google.nl/books?id=y8e2zLpDngQC&pg=PA18&dq=%22+He+was+ignorant+of+the+commonest+accomplishments+of+youth.+He+could+not+even+lie%22&hl=nl&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjVpM31tsbMAhXFshQKHZ32Ci0Q6AEIJTAB#v=onepage&q=%22%20He%20was%20ignorant%20of%20the%20commonest%20accomplishments%20of%20youth.%20He%20could%20not%20even%20lie%22&f=false, Mercer University Press, 2003, p. 18
Richard Locke, Critical Children: The Use of Childhood in Ten Great Novels https://books.google.nl/books?id=38erAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA12&dq=%22+He+was+ignorant+of+the+commonest+accomplishments+of+youth.+He+could+not+even+lie%22&hl=nl&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjVpM31tsbMAhXFshQKHZ32Ci0Q6AEIPTAE#v=onepage&q=%22%20He%20was%20ignorant%20of%20the%20commonest%20accomplishments%20of%20youth.%20He%20could%20not%20even%20lie%22&f=false, Columbia University Press, p. 12

“None but the dead have free speech.”

Source: Mark Twain's Notebook (1935), p. 393

“Honesty is the best policy — when there is money in it.”

Speech to Eastman College (1901)

“Why, it was like reading about France and the French, before the ever memorable and blessed Revolution, which swept a thousand years of such villany away in one swift tidal-wave of blood -- one: a settlement of that hoary debt in the proportion of half a drop of blood for each hogshead of it that had been pressed by slow tortures out of that people in the weary stretch of ten centuries of wrong and shame and misery the like of which was not to be mated but in hell. There were two "Reigns of Terror," if we would but remember it and consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passion, the other in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other had lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon ten thousand persons, the other upon a hundred millions; but our shudders are all for the "horrors" of the minor Terror, the momentary Terror, so to speak; whereas, what is the horror of swift death by the axe, compared with lifelong death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty, and heart-break? What is swift death by lightning compared with death by slow fire at the stake? A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by that brief Terror which we have all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over; but all France could hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real Terror -- that unspeakably bitter and awful Terror which none of us has been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves.”

Ch. 13 http://www.literature.org/authors/twain-mark/connecticut/chapter-13.html
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889)

“Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint.”

Attributed to Markus Herz by Ernst von Feuchtersleben, Zur Diätetik der Seele (1841), p. 95 http://books.google.com/books?id=FLc6AAAAcAAJ&pg=PA95&dq=%22Lieber+Freund+Sie+werden+noch+einmal+an+einem+Druckfehler+sterben%22. First attributed to Twain in 1980s, as in The 637 best things anybody ever said, (1982), Robert Byrne, Atheneum. See talk page for more info.
Misattributed
Variant: Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint.

“We believe that out of the public school grows the greatness of a nation.”

Address at a meeting of the Berkeley Lyceum, New York, November 23, 1900. Quoted in Mark Twain's Speeches (1910), ed. William Dean Howells, p. 146 http://books.google.com/books?id=7etXZ5Q17ngC&pg=PA146 (The speech is titled "Public Education Association" in that book, but also referred to elsewhere as his "I am a Boxer" speech.)

“A circle is a round straight line with a hole in the middle.”

Quoting a schoolchild in "English as She Is Taught"

“I have no color prejudices nor caste prejudices nor creed prejudices. All I care to know is that a man is a human being, and that is enough for me; he can't be any worse.”

Concerning the Jews (Harper's Magazine, Sept. 1899)
Variant: I have no race prejudices nor caste prejudices nor creed prejudices. All I care to know is that a man is a human being, and that is enough for me; he can't be any worse.

“I don't see no p'ints about that frog that's any better'n any other frog.”

"The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" (1865)

“"In God We Trust." Now then, after that legend had remained there forty years or so, unchallenged and doing no harm to anybody, the President suddenly "threw a fit" the other day, as the popular expression goes, and ordered that remark to be removed from our coinage.
Mr. Carnegie granted that the matter was not of consequence, that a coin had just exactly the same value without the legend as with it, and he said he had no fault to find with Mr. Roosevelt's action but only with his expressed reasons for the act. The President had ordered the suppression of that motto because a coin carried the name of God into improper places, and this was a profanation of the Holy Name. Carnegie said the name of God is used to being carried into improper places everywhere and all the time, and that he thought the President's reasoning rather weak and poor.
I thought the same, and said, "But that is just like the President. If you will notice, he is very much in the habit of furnishing a poor reason for his acts while there is an excellent reason staring him in the face, which he overlooks. There was a good reason for removing that motto; there was, indeed, an unassailably good reason — in the fact that the motto stated a lie. If this nation has ever trusted in God, that time has gone by; for nearly half a century almost its entire trust has been in the Republican party and the dollar–mainly the dollar. I recognize that I am only making an assertion and furnishing no proof; I am sorry, but this is a habit of mine; sorry also that I am not alone in it; everybody seems to have this disease.
Take an instance: the removal of the motto fetched out a clamor from the pulpit; little groups and small conventions of clergymen gathered themselves together all over the country, and one of these little groups, consisting of twenty-two ministers, put up a prodigious assertion unbacked by any quoted statistics and passed it unanimously in the form of a resolution: the assertion, to wit, that this is a Christian country. Why, Carnegie, so is hell. Those clergymen know that, inasmuch as "Strait is the way and narrow is the gate, and few — few — are they that enter in thereat" has had the natural effect of making hell the only really prominent Christian community in any of the worlds; but we don't brag of this and certainly it is not proper to brag and boast that America is a Christian country when we all know that certainly five-sixths of our population could not enter in at the narrow gate.”

Statements (c. December 1907), in Mark Twain In Eruption : Hitherto Unpublished Pages About Men And Events (1940) edited by Bernard Augustine De Voto