Quotes by Mark Twain

A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way.

Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.

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

The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.

A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval.

If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and man.

Better to keep your mouth closed and be thought a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.

An honest man in politics shines more there than he would elsewhere.

I can last two months on a good compliment.

Sacred cows make the best hamburger.

God created war so that Americans would learn geography.

I am only human, although I regret it.

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

All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence; then success is sure.

Plain question and plain answer make the shortest road out of most perplexities.

I didn't have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.

The truth hurts, but silence kills.

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.

Architects cannot teach nature anything.

Nature knows no indecencies; man invents them.

He gossips habitually; he lacks the common wisdom to keep still that deadly enemy of man, his own tongue.

Give every day the chance to become the most beautiful day of your life.

Sanity and happiness are an impossible combination.

The best way to cheer yourself is to try to cheer someone else up.

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

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

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

The right word may be effective, but no word was ever as effective as a rightly timed pause.

A man is never more truthful than when he acknowledges himself a liar.

Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example.

Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don't mind, it doesn't matter.

Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company.

Right is right, and wrong is wrong, and a body ain’t got no business doing wrong when he ain’t ignorant and knows better.

A gentleman is someone who knows how to play the banjo and doesn't.

Do something everyday that you don't want to do; this is the golden rule for acquiring the habit of doing your duty without pain.

Nothing that grieves us can be called little: by the eternal laws of proportion a child's loss of a doll and a king's loss of a crown are events of the same size.

Jim said that bees won't sting idiots, but I didn't believe that, because I tried them lots of times myself and they wouldn't sting me.

The older I get, the more clearly I remember things that never happened.

Facts are stubborn things, but statistics are pliable.

I can teach anybody how to get what they want out of life. The problem is that I can't find anybody who can tell me what they want.

The less there is to justify a traditional custom, the harder it is to get rid of it

The lack of money is the root of all evil.

We may not pay Satan reverence, for that would be indiscreet, but we can at least respect his talents.

When a man loves cats, I am his friend and comrade, without further introduction.

Let us consider that we are all partially insane. It will explain us to each other; it will unriddle many riddles; it will make clear and simple many things which are involved in haunting and harassing difficulties and obscurities now.

Humor is mankind's greatest blessing.

Write what you know.

It's spring fever. That is what the name of it is. And when you've got it, you want—oh, you don't quite know what it is you do want, but it just fairly makes your heart ache, you want it so!

Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.

Good judgement is the result of experience and experience the result of bad judgement.

Don't wake up a woman in love. Let her dream, so that she does not weep when she returns to her bitter reality

The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex overwhelming tasks into small manageable tasks, and starting on the first one.

Noise proves nothing. Often a hen who has laid an egg cackles as if she had laid an asteroid.

It is by the goodness of god that in our country we have those 3 unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them.

When red-headed people are above a certain social grade their hair is auburn.

When I am king they shall not have bread and shelter only, but also teachings out of books, for a full belly is little worth where the mind is starved.

The man who is a pessimist before 48 knows too much; if he is an optimist after it he knows too little.

Write without pay until somebody offers to pay.

Ignorant people think it is the noise which fighting cats make that is so aggravating, but it ain't so; it is the sickening grammar that they use.

He who asks is a fool for five minutes, but he who does not ask remains a fool forever.

The government is merely a servant―merely a temporary servant; it cannot be its prerogative to determine what is right and what is wrong, and decide who is a patriot and who isn't. Its function is to obey orders, not originate them.

Religion was invented when the first con man met the first fool.

Too much of anything is bad, but too much good whiskey is barely enough.

Often it does seem such a pity that Noah and his party did not miss the boat.

That is just the way with some people. They get down on a thing when they don’t know nothing about it.

Never argue with an idiot. They will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.

Comparison is the death of joy.

Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond; cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education.

Writing is easy. All you have to do is cross out the wrong words.

The fact that man knows right from wrong proves his intellectual superiority to the other creatures; but the fact that he can do wrong proves his moral inferiority to any creatures that cannot.

The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.

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 things that never happened. It is sad to go to pieces like this but we all have to do it.

Life does not consist mainly, or even largely, of facts or happenings. It consist mainly of the storm of thoughts that is forever flowing through one's head.

Under certain circumstances, profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer.

I thoroughly disapprove of duels. If a man should challenge me, I would take him kindly and forgivingly by the hand and lead him to a quiet place and kill him.

Let us be thankful for the fools. But for them the rest of us could not succeed.

Patriotism is supporting your country all the time and your government when it deserves it.

Now and then we had a hope that if we lived and were good, God would permit us to be pirates.

What is Man? Man is a noisome bacillus whom Our Heavenly Father created because he was disappointed in the monkey.

There isn't time, so brief is life, for bickerings, apologies, heartburnings, callings to account. There is only time for loving, and but an instant, so to speak, for that.

Let us live so that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.

When you fish for love, bait with your heart, not your brain.

Never argue with a fool, onlookers may not be able to tell the difference.

Be good and you will be lonesome.

Why do you sit there looking like an envelope without any address on it?

In the first place God made idiots. This was for practice. Then he made school boards.

A person that started in to carry a cat home by the tail was getting knowledge that was always going to be useful to him, and warn't ever going to grow dim or doubtful.

Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason.

There's one way to find out if a man is honest: ask him; if he says yes, you know he's crooked.

A half-truth is the most cowardly of lies.

Worrying is like paying a debt you don't owe.

Thunder is good, thunder is impressive; but it is lightning that does the work.

Obscurity and a competence—that is the life that is best worth living.

The more I learn about people, the more I like my dog.

Man is the only animal that blushes. Or needs to.

If Christ were here there is one thing he would not be—a Christian.

In the beginning of a change the patriot is a scarce man, and brave, and hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a patriot.

It's easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.

There was never yet an uninteresting life. Such a thing is an impossibility. Inside of the dullest exterior there is a drama, a comedy, and a tragedy.