Mark Twain Quotes

Gratitude and treachery are merely the two extremities of the same procession. You have seen all of it that is worth staying for when the band and the gaudy officials have gone by.

An ecstasy is a thing that will not go into words; it feels like music.

How far we travel in life matters far less than those we meet along the way.

Don't live in the past, don't ponder about the future, stay at the PRESENT moment NOW...always.

Agassiz does recommend authors to eat fish, because the phosphorus in it makes brains. But I cannot help you to a decision about the amount you need to eat. Perhaps a couple of whales would be enough.

Whose property is my body? Probably mine. I so regard it. If I experiment with it, who must be answerable? I, not the State. If I choose injudiciously, does the state die? Oh, no.

Life would be infinitely happier if we could only be born at the age of eighty and gradually approach eighteen.

The lack of money is the root of all evil.

There is no God, no universe, no human race, no earthly life, no heaven, no hell. It is all a dream, a grotesque and foolish dream. Nothing exists but you. And you are but a thought -a vagrant thought, a useless thought, a homeless thought, wandering forlorn among the empty eternities!

We were good boys, good Presbyterian boys, and loyal and all that; anyway, we were good Presbyterian boys when the weather was doubtful; when it was fair, we did wander a little from the fold.

There was no place in the land where the seeker could not find some small budding sign of pity for the slave. No place in all the land but one - the pulpit. It yielded last; it always does. It fought a strong and stubborn fight, and then did what it always does, joined the procession - at the tail end. Slavery fell. The slavery texts in the Bible remained; the practice changed; that was all.

An honest politician is an oxymoron.

Pity is for the living, envy is for the dead.

Never let formal education get in the way of your learning.

Conformity—the natural instinct to passively yield to that vague something recognized as authority.

The frankest and freest and privatest product of the human mind and heart is a love letter.

It is hopeless for the occasional visitor to try to keep up with Chicago-she outgrows his prophecies faster than he can make them. She is always a novelty; for she is never the Chicago you saw when you passed through the last time.

I was armed to the teeth with a pitiful little Smith & Wesson's seven-shooter, which carried a ball like a homopathic pill, and it took the whole seven to make a dose for an adult. But I thought it was grand. It appeared to me to be a dangerous weapon. It had only one fault - you could not hit anything with it.

Man is the Reasoning Animal. Such is the claim. I think it is open to dispute.

When you ascend the hill of prosperity, may you not meet a friend.

If it is a Miracle, any sort of evidence will answer, but if it is a Fact, proof is necessary

I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time.

I came in with Halley's Comet in 1835. It is coming again next year, and I expect to go out with it. It will be the greatest disappointment of my life if I don't go out with Halley's Comet. The Almighty has said, no doubt: "Now here are these two unaccountable freaks; they came in together, they must go out together.

Yes, even I am dishonest. Not in many ways, but in some. Forty-one, I think it is.

Stars and shadows ain't good to see by.

If your only tool is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail.

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.

In German, a young lady has no sex, but a turnip has

I suppose, just as an honest man in politics shines more than he would elsewhere.

My brother had just been appointed Secretary of Nevada Territory--an office of such majesty that it concentrated in itself the duties and dignities of Treasurer, Comptroller, Secretary of State, and Acting Governor in the Governor's absence. A salary of eighteen hundred dollars a year and the title of "Mr. Secretary," gave to the great position an air of wild and imposing grandeur. I was young and ignorant, and I envied my brother.

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 practiced in the tricks and delusions of oratory

Never let the truth get in the way of a good story.

Citizenship is what makes a republic - monarchies can get along without it.

I have thought many times since that if poets when they get discouraged would blow their brains out, they could write very much better when they got well.

Protestant parents still keep a Bible handy in the house, so that the children can study it, and one of the first things the little boys and girls learn is to be righteous and holy and not piss against the wall. They study those passages more than they study any others, except those which incite to masturbation. Those they hunt out and study in private.

Written things are not for speech; their form is literary; they are stiff, inflexible, and will not lend themselves to happy and effective delivery with the tongue-where their purpose is to merely entertain, not instruct; they have to be limbered up, broken up, colloquialized and turned into common forms of premeditated talk-otherwise they will bore the house and not entertain it.

We teach them to take their patriotism at second-hand; to shout with the largest crowd without examining into the right or wrong of the matter -- exactly as boys under monarchies are taught and have always been taught. We teach them to regard as traitors, and hold in aversion and contempt, such as do not shout with the crowd, and so here in our democracy we are cheering a thing which of all things is most foreign to it and out of place -- the delivery of our political conscience into somebody else's keeping. This is patriotism on the Russian plan.

A man is accepted into a church for what he believes and he is turned out for what he knows.

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We are chameleons, and our partialities and prejudices change place with an easy and blesses facility, and we are soon wonted to the change and happy in it.

Baseball is the very symbol, the outward and visible expression of the drive and push and rush and struggle of the raging, tearing, booming nineteenth century.

The most outrageous lies that can be invented will find believers if a person only tells them with all his might.

There are people who think that honesty is always the best policy. This is a superstition. There are times when the appearance of it is worth six of it.

I felt it was my duty to praise all of God's works with fervent enthusiasm. At the same time I killed flies in my house in a spirit of hatred, exasperation and contempt. My praise to God for all his works was dishonest, the act of killing the fly was honest.

Love is an irreresisistible desire to be irresistibily desired.

When in doubt tell the truth. It will confound your enemies and astound your friends.

If God had meant for us to be naked, we'd have been born that way.

The primary rule of business success is loyalty to your employer. That's all right as a theory. What is the matter with loyalty to yourself?