Mark Twain citations (660 citations, Page 19)

Variante: Dans vingt ans, vous serez plus déçu par les choses que vous n'avez pas faites que par celles que vous avez faites. Alors sortez des sentiers battus. Mettez les voiles. Explorez. Rêvez. Découvrez.

De motivation

“Le romancier qui écrit une histoire d’adulte sait exactement où et comment s’arrêter, c’est le plus souvent par un mariage. Quand il s’agit d’un enfant, il s’arrête où il peut.”

Mark Twain livre Les Aventures de Tom Sawyer

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“Un pauvre garçon qui n’avait rien d’autre à proposer alla jusqu’à dire, avec une fierté manifeste à ce souvenir : « Eh bien, moi, une fois, Tom Sawyer m’a battu ! »”

Mark Twain livre Les Aventures de Tom Sawyer

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“La charité nous force à tirer le rideau sur le reste de cette scène.”

Mark Twain livre Les Aventures de Tom Sawyer

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

Cette traduction est en attente de révision. Est-ce correct?

“Beaucoup de petites choses furent agrandies par le bon type de publicité.”

Mark Twain

Cette traduction est en attente de révision. Est-ce correct?

“Les informations les plus intéressantes proviennent des enfants, car ils disent tout ce qu'ils savent et puis s'arrêtent.”

Mark Twain

enfants

Cette traduction est en attente de révision. Est-ce correct?

“Faites toujours ce qui est bien. Cela satisfera la moitié de l'humanité et étonnera l'autre.”

Mark Twain

Cette traduction est en attente de révision. Est-ce correct?

“Mais qui prie pour Satan? Qui, en dix-huit siècles, a eu un peu d'humanité pour prier pour le seul pécheur qui en avait le plus besoin?”

Mark Twain

Mark Twain: Citations en anglais

“…an Autobiography is the truest of all books; for while it inevitably consists mainly of extinctions of the truth, shirkings of the truth, partial revealments of the truth, with hardly an instance of plain straight truth, the remorseless truth is there, between the lines, where the author-cat is raking dust upon it which hides from the disinterested spectator neither it nor its smell…—the result being that the reader knows the author in spite of his wily diligences.”

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Mark Twain

Source: Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 1 (2010), pp. 21–22

“When even the brightest mind in our world has been trained up from childhood in a superstition of any kind, it will never be possible for that mind, in its maturity, to examine sincerely, dispassionately, and conscientiously any evidence or any circumstance which shall seem to cast a doubt upon the validity of that superstition. I doubt if I could do it myself.”

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Mark Twain livre Is Shakespeare Dead?

Is Shakespeare Dead? (1909), §11, as reprinted in Essays and Sketches of Mark Twain (1995), ed. Stuart Miller, ISBN 1566198798

“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.”

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Mark Twain livre Concerning the Jews

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

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

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Mark Twain

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

“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.”

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Mark Twain livre Les Aventures de Tom Sawyer

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

“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.”

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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

““[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.”

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Mark Twain

"The Privilege of the Grave" (1905)

“…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.”

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Mark Twain

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

“Prosperity is the best protector of principle.”

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Mark Twain livre 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
Following the Equator (1897)

“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.”

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Mark Twain livre The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg

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

“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.”

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Mark Twain livre The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg

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

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

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Mark Twain livre Following the Equator

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

“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.”

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Mark Twain livre Les Aventures de Tom Sawyer

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

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

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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

“…. 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.”

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Mark Twain

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

“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.”

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Mark Twain

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

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

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Mark Twain

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

“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.”

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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)

“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.”

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Mark Twain

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

“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.”

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Mark Twain

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

“[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.”

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Mark Twain

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

“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."”

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Mark Twain

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

“There warn't anybody at the church, except maybe a hog or two, for there warn't any lock on the door, and hogs likes a puncheon floor in summer-time because it's cool. If you notice, most folks don't go to church only when they've got to; but a hog is different.”

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Mark Twain livre Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Source: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885), Ch. 18

“It [the press] has scoffed at religion till it has made scoffing popular. It has defended official criminals, on party pretexts, until it has created a United States Senate whose members are incapable of determining what crime against law and the dignity of their own body is—they are so morally blind—and it has made light of dishonesty till we have as a result a Congress which contracts to work for a certain sum and then deliberately steals additional wages out of the public pocket and is pained and surprised that anybody should worry about a little thing like that.”

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Mark Twain

"License of the Press", an address before the Monday Evening Club, Hartford (1873)

“Try as you may, you don't get down as you would from a horse, you get down as you would from a house afire. You make a spectacle of yourself every time.”

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Mark Twain

"Taming the Bicycle" (1917)

“It is more trouble to make a maxim than it is to do right.”

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Mark Twain livre Following the Equator

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

“She makes me get up just at the same time every morning; she makes me wash, they comb me all to thunder; she won't let me sleep in the woodshed; I got to wear them blamed clothes that just smothers me, Tom; they don't seem to let any air git through 'em, somehow; and they're so rotten nice that I can't set down, nor lay down, nor roll around anywher's; I hain't slid on a cellar-door for — well, it 'pears to be years; I got to go to church and sweat and sweat — I hate them ornery sermons! I can't ketch a fly in there, I can't chaw. I got to wear shoes all Sunday. The widder eats by a bell; she goes to bed by a bell; she gits up by a bell — everything's so awful reg'lar a body can't stand it.”

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Mark Twain livre Les Aventures de Tom Sawyer

Source: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876), Ch. 35

“Death, the only immortal who treats us all alike, whose pity and whose peace and whose refuge are for all — the soiled and the pure, the rich and the poor, the loved and the unloved.”

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Mark Twain

Memorandum written on his deathbed
Mark Twain's Notebook (1935)

“There isn't anything so grotesque or so incredible that the average human being can't believe it.”

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Mark Twain

Source: Autobiography of Mark Twain, Vol. 2 (2013), p. 136

“Man has been here 32,000 years. That it took a hundred million years to prepare the world for him is proof that that is what it was done for. I suppose it is, I dunno. If the Eiffel Tower were now representing the world's age, the skin of paint on the pinnacle-knob at its summit would represent man's share of that age; and anybody would perceive that the skin was what the tower was built for. I reckon they would, I dunno.”

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Mark Twain

Was the World Made for Man? (1903): also p. 106, What is man?: and other philosophical writings, Volume 19 of Works, 1993, Mark Twain, Paul Baender, University of California Press