Mark Twain Quotes

The best and most telling speech is not the actual impromptu one but the counterfeit of it.

I have traveled more than anyone else, and I have noticed that even the angels speak English with an accent.

My land, the power of training! Of influence! Of education! It can bring a body up to believe anything.

He was a solemn, unsmiling, sanctimonious old iceberg who looked like he was waiting for a vacancy in the Trinity.

Whatever you have lived, you can write & by hard work & a genuine apprenticeship, you can learn to write well; but what you have not lived you cannot write, you can only pretend to write it.

The first half of my life I went to school, the second half of my life I got an education.

The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it.

There is no unhappiness like the misery of sighting land (and work) again after a cheerful, careless voyage.

The work that is really a man's own work is play and not work at all.

I shall never use profanity except in discussing house rent and taxes.

When I was 17, my father was so stupid, I didn't want to be seen with him in public. When I was 24, I was amazed at how much the old man had learned in just 7 years.

[N]o country can be well governed unless its citizens as a body keep religiously before their minds that they are the guardians of the law and that the law officers are only the machinery for its execution, nothing more.

Life ain't about how fast you run or how high you climb, It's all about how good you bounce. A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval.

I have too much respect for the truth to drag it out on every trifling occasion.

The Germans are exceedingly fond of Rhine wines; they are put up in tall, slender bottles, and are considered a pleasant beverage. One tells them from vinegar by the label.

You may say organize, organize, organize; but there may be so much organization that it will interfere with the work to be done.

Look at you in war...There has never been a just one, never an honorable one, on the part of the instigator of the war.

In the Spring, I have counted 136 different kinds of weather inside of 24 hours.

I have seen slower people than I am and more deliberate... and even quieter, and more listless, and lazier people than I am. But they were dead.

We were surprised how closely the cuckoo imitated the clock-and yet, of course, it could never have heard a clock.

Truth is neither alive nor dead; it just aggravates itself all the time.

There is probably no pleasure equal to the pleasure of climbing a dangerous Alp; but it is a pleasure which is confined strictly to people who can find pleasure in it.

People are much more willing to lend you books than bookcases.

Nothing spoils a good story like the arrival of an eyewitness.

It is a dear and lovely disposition, and a most valuable one, that can brush away indignities and discourtesies and seek and find the pleasanter features of an experience.

No sinner is ever saved after the first twenty minutes of a sermon.

Imagine, if you will, that I am an idiot. Then, imagine that I am also a Congressman. But, alas, I repeat myself.

I am trying to get the hang of this new fangled writing machine, but I am not making a shining success of it. However, this is the first attempt I have ever made & yet I perceive I shall soon & easily acquire a fine facility in its use. ... The machine has several virtues. I believe it will print faster than I can write. One may lean back in his chair & work it. It piles an awful stack of words on one page. It don't muss things or scatter ink blots around. Of course it saves paper.

Happiness ain't a thing in itself -it's only a contrast with something that ain't pleasant. And so, as soon as the novelty is over and the force of the contrast dulled, it ain't happiness any longer, and you have to get something fresh.

Never do wrong when people are looking.

A wise man does not waste so good a commodity as lying for naught.

They did not know it was impossible so they did it

Familiarity breeds contempt - and children.

A person with a new idea is a crank until the idea succeeds.

...one should be gentle with the ignorant, for they are the chosen of God.

Until I came to New Mexico, I never realized how much beauty water adds to a river.

All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence; then success is sure. You can "already know for sure" things that could actually impede progress. Always be on the lookout for the things you did not know, that you did not know. Secondly, work on strengthening personal belief that a particular will be achieved regardless of any adversity that may show up, or evidence to the contrary.

The worst thing you can do to a man is to tell him he can have what he wants.

I think we never become really and genuinely our entire and honest selves until we are dead--and not then until we have been dead years and years. People ought to start dead, and they would be honest so much earlier.

God was left out of the Constitution, but was furnished a front seat in this nations currency. ("In God we Trust") is a lie, this nations trust has always been with the dollar.

The low level which commercial morality has reached in America is deplorable. We have humble God fearing Christian men among us who will stoop to do things for a million dollars that they ought not to be willing to do for less than 2 millions.

It is your human environment that makes climate

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

What a wee little part of a person's life are his acts and his words! His real life is led in his head, and is known to none but himself.

I am aware that I am very old now; but I am also aware that I have never been so young as I am now, in spirit, since I was fourteen and entertained Jim Wolf with the wasps. I am only able to perceive that I am old by a mental process; I am altogether unable to feel old in spirit. It is a pity, too, for my lapses from gravity must surely often be a reproach to me. When I am in the company of very young people I always feel that I am one of them, and they probably privately resent it.

It has always been a peculiarity of the human race that it keeps two sets of morals in stock-the private and the real, and the public and the artificial.

The secret source of humor is not joy but sorrow.

If true, rarely beautiful. If beautiful, rarely true.