Mark Twain Quotes

I've seen many troubles in my time, only half of which ever came true.

Honest poverty is a gem that even a king might be proud to call his own - but I wish to sell out

If ignorance is bliss, why isn't the world happier?

I said there was nothing so convincing to an Indian as a general massacre. If he could not approve of the massacre, I said the next surest thing for an Indian was soap and education. Soap and education are not as sudden as a massacre, but they are more deadly in the long run; because a half-massacred Indian may recover, but if you educate him and wash him, it is bound to finish him some time or other.

I have only one moral precept; never smoke more than five cigars at a time.

If the world ends, I'll just head on down to Kentucky because they're always 20 years behind.

The problem with education is school.

I have never seen what to me seemed an atom of proof that there is a future life. And yet-I am inclined to expect one.

If there is a God, he is a malign thug.

It is governed by minorities, seldom or never by majorities. It suppresses its feelings and its beliefs and follows the handful that makes the most noise. Sometimes the noisy handful is right, sometimes wrong, but no matter, the crowd follows it.

Continuous improvement is better than delayed perfection.

The joy of killing! the joy of seeing killing done - these are traits of the human race at large.

In my nostrils still lives the breath of flowers that perished twenty years ago.

I like a thin book because it will Steady a Table, a leather volume because it will Strop a Razor, and a heavy book because it can be Thrown at a Cat.

Every one knew he could foretell wars and famines, though that was not so hard, for there was always a war, and generally a famine somewhere.

I have no race prejudices, and I think I have no color prejudices or caste prejudices nor creed prejudices. Indeed I know it. I can stand any society. All that I care to know is that a man is a human being-that is enough for me; he can't be any worse.

Change is the handmaiden Nature requires to do her miracles with.

My books are like water; those of the great geniuses are wine. (Fortunately) everybody drinks water.

In this age of inventive wonders all men have come to believe that in some genius' brain sleeps the solution of the grand problem of aerial navigation-and along with that belief is the hope that that genius will reveal his miracle before they die, and likewise a dread that he will poke off somewhere and die himself before he finds out that he has such a wonder lying dormant in his brain. We all know the air can be navigated-therefore, hurry up your sails and bladders-satisfy us-let us have peace.

The perfection of wisdom, and the end of true philosophy is to proportion our wants to our possessions, our ambitions to our capacities, we will then be a happy and a virtuous people.

I have spent most of my time worrying about things that have never happened. Worrying is not an action! In fact, it is action that alleviates concern and dissipates worries. Take more actions when you feel that worry is creeping in to steal your time. It need not be a huge action, any action in the direction you want to go will do.

I have achieved my seventy years in the usual way: by sticking strictly to a scheme of life which would kill anybody else... I will offer here, as a sound maxim, this: That we can't reach old age by another man's road.

Don't say the old lady screamed. Bring her on and let her scream.

Travel is fatal to bigotry.

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.

In forgiving, people are not being asked to forget. On the contrary, it is important to remember, so that we should not let such atrocities happen again. Forgiveness does not mean condoning what has been done. It means taking what happened seriously...drawing out the sting in the memory that threatens our entire existence.

Synergy - the bonus that is achieved when things work together harmoniously.

Never put off till tomorrow what you can do day after tomorrow just as well.

The Germans have an inhuman way of cutting up their verbs. Now a verb has a hard time enough of it in this world when it's all together. It's downright inhuman to split it up. But that's just what those Germans do. They take part of a verb and put it down here, like a stake, and they take the other part of it and put it away over yonder like another stake, and between these two limits they just shovel in German. from "Disappearance of Literature

All right, then, I'll go to hell.

The people of those foreign countries are very, very ignorant. They looked curiously at the costumes we had brought from the wilds of America. They observed that we talked loudly at table sometimes. They noticed that we looked out for expenses and got what we conveniently could out of a franc, and wondered where in the mischief we came from. In Paris they just simply opened their eyes and stared when we spoke to them in French! We never did succeed in making those idiots understand their own language.

One compliment can keep me going for a whole month.

I wish I could make him understand that a loving good heart is riches enough, and that without it intellect is poverty.

Wine is a clog to the pen, not an inspiration.

Most of the things I worried about in life never happened.

If the desire to kill and the opportunity to kill came always together, who would escape hanging?

Education that consists in learning things and not the meaning of them is feeding upon the husks and not the corn

To lodge all power in one party and keep it there is to insure bad government and the sure and gradual deterioration of the public morals.

Temper is what gets most of us into trouble. Pride is what keeps us there.

The human race consists of the damned and the ought-to-be damned.

One is apt to overestimate beauty when it is rare

An American has not seen the United States until he has seen Mardi-Gras in New Orleans.

I was seldom able to see an opportunity until it had ceased to be one.

I'm pushing 60 years of age...and that's enough exercise for me.

There are no standards of taste in wine... Each man's own taste is the standard, and a majority vote cannot decide for him or in any slightest degree affect the supremacy of his own standard.

I have spent most of my life worrying about things that have never happened.

The Mississippi River towns are comely, clean, well built, and pleasing to the eye, and cheering to the spirit. The Mississippi Valley is as reposeful as a dreamland, nothing worldly about it . . . nothing to hang a fret or a worry upon.

He had the calm confidence of a Christian with four aces.