Mark Twain Quotes

To go abroad has something of the same sense that death brings. I am no longer of ye-what ye say of me is now of no consequence.

In Boston they ask, how much does he know? In New York, how much is he worth? In Philadelphia, who were his parents?

Let us swear while we may, for in heaven it will not be allowed

A soiled baby with a neglected nose cannot be conscientiously regarded as a thing of beauty.

Give a man a reputation as an early riser and he can sleep 'til noon.

When I'm playful I use the meridians of longitude and parallels of latitude for a seine, and drag the Atlantic Ocean for whales. I scratch my head with the lightning and purr myself to sleep with the thunder.

Very well, then, where do we arrive? Where do we arrive with our respect, our homage, our filial affection? At Adam! At Adam, every time. We can't build a monument to a germ, but we can build one to Adam, who is in the way to turn myth in in fifty years and be entirely forgotten in two hundred. We can build a monument and save his name to the world forever, and we'll do it!

Public Servant: Persons chosen by the people to distribute the graft.

A reputable lawyer will advise you to keep out of the law, make the best of a foolish bargain, and not get caught again.

Dates are hard to remember because they consist of figures; figures are monotonously unstriking in appearance, and they don't take hold, they form no pictures, and so they give the eye no chance to help. Pictures are the thing. Pictures can make dates stick.

To be satisfied with what one has; that is wealth. As long as one sorely needs a certain additional amount, that man isn't rich.

Laws are sand, customs are rock. Laws can be evaded and punishment escaped, but an openly transgressed custom brings sure punishment.

A banker is a fellow who lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining, but wants it back the minute it begins to rain.

There is nothing so annoying as a good example!!

Tomorrow night I appear for the first time before a Boston audience - 4000 critics.

We have to be despised by somebody whom we regard as above us, or we are not happy; we have to have somebody to worship and envy,or we cannot be content. In America we manifest this in all the ancient and customary ways. In public we scoff at titles and hereditary privilege, but privately we hanker after them, and when we get a chance we buy them for cash and a daughter.

If you are with the quality, or at a funeral, or trying to go to sleep when you ain't sleepy - if you are anywheres where it won't do for you to scratch, why you will itch all over in upwards of a thousand places.

The man who isn't a pessimist is a damned fool.

As an example to others, and not that I care for moderation myself, it has always been my rule never to smoke when asleep, and never to refrain from smoking when awake.

Learning to play two pairs is worth about as much as a college education, and about as costly.

Fortune knocks at every man's door once in a life, but in a good many cases the man is in a neighboring saloon and does not hear her.

If all men were rich, all men would be poor.

There is not a single human characteristic that can be safely labeled as American.

One thing at a time, is my motto - and just play that thing for all it is worth, even if it's only tto pair and a jack.

The altar cloth of one aeon is the doormat of the next.

If I were required to guess off-hand, and without collusion with higher minds, what is the bottom cause of the amazing material and intellectual advancement of the last fifty years, I should guess that it was the modern-born and previously non-existent disposition on the part of men to believe that a new idea can have value.

What is the chief end of man?-to get rich. In what way?-dishonestly if we can; honestly if we must. Who is God, the one and only true? Money is God. Gold and Greenbacks and Stock-father, son, and ghosts of same, three persons in one; These are the true and only God, mighty and supreme.

Ideally a book would have no order to it, and the reader would have to discover his own.

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

Work and play are words used to describe the same thing under differing conditions.

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

Except a person be part coward, it is not a compliment to say he is brave.

Everyone is a moon, and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody.

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

A wanton waste of projectiles.

Of the demonstrably wise there are but two: those who commit suicide, & those who keep their reasoning faculties atrophied with drink.

One mustn't criticize other people on grounds where he can't stand perpendicular himself

I ordinarily smoke fifteen cigars during my five hours' labours, and if my interest reaches the enthusiastic point, I smoke more. I smoke with all my might, and allow no intervals.

The universal brotherhood of man is our most precious possession.

I begin to see that a man's got to be in his own heaven to be happy.

When an honest writer discovers an imposition it is his simple duty to strip it bare and hurl it down from its place of honor, no matter who suffers by it; any other course would render him unworthy of the public confidence.

The average woman would rather have beauty than brains, because the average man can see better than he can think.

If the statistics are right, the Jews constitute but one percent of the human race. It suggests a nebulous dim puff of star dust lost in the blaze of the Milky Way. Properly the Jew ought hardly to be heard of, but he is heard of, has always been heard of. He is as prominent on the planet as any other people, and his commercial importance is extravagantly out of proportion to the smallness of his bulk. His contributions to the world's list of great names in literature, science, art, music, finance, medicine, and abstruse learning are also away out of proportion to the weakness of his numbers.

Thousands of geniuses live and die undiscovered - either by themselves or by others.

It were not best that we should all think alike.

The easy part of being an artist is figuring out the message that everyone else is ready to hear. The hard part is waiting for the proper lull to make the announcement.

Irrevence is another person's disrespect to your god; there isn't any word that tells what your disrespect to his god is.

What are the proper proportions of a maxim? A minimum of sound to a maximum of sense.