Mark Twain Quotes

No man's life, liberty, or property are safe while the legislature is in session.

Optimist: day-dreamer in his small clothes.

Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.

My idea of our civilization is that it is a shoddy, poor thing and full of cruelties, vanities, arrogances, meannesses and hypocrisies.

There are some natures which never grow large enough to speak out and say a bad act is a bad act, until they have inquired into the politics or the nationality of the man who did it.

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

Only laughter can blow [a colossal humbug] to rags and atoms at a blast. Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand.

Canadian girls are so pretty it's a relief now and then to see a plain one.

If you can't get a compliment any other way, pay yourself one.

I cherish the dreams of yesterday and dare not dwell on the err's of my past whose fate has been long decided, and effect I can not change. For the dreams of yesterday are the challenges of today, and the hope for tomorrow.

If man could be crossed with the cat, it would improve man but deteriorate the cat.

The Autocrat of Russia possesses more power than any other man in the earth; but he cannot stop a sneeze.

Modesty antedates clothes and will be resumed when clothes are no more.

If a person offends you, and you are in doubt as to whether it was intentional or not, do not resort to extreme measures; simply watch your chance, and hit him with a brick.

A German joke is no laughing matter.

The Mississippi River will always have its own way; no engineering skill can persuade it to do otherwise.

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.

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

When people do not respect us we are sharply offended; yet in his private heart no man much respects himself.

It was in Warwick Castle that I came across the curious stranger whom I am going to talk about. He attracted me by three things: his candid simplicity, his marvelous familiarity with ancient armor, and the restfulness of his company--for he did all the talking.

When one has tasted watermelons, one knows what angels eat. It was not a Southern watermelon that Eve took; we know it because she repented.

I cannot see the short, white curls Upon the forehead of an Ox, But what I see them dripping with That poor thing's blood, and hear the ax; When I see calves and lambs, I see Them led to death; I see no bird Or rabbit cross the open field But what a sudden shot is heard; A shout that tells me men aim true, For death or wound, doth chill me through. W.H. Davies I have been studying the traits and dispositions of the "lower animals" (so called) and contrasting them with the traits and dispositions of man. I find the result humiliating to me.

Another editor. That thing behind his ear is his pencil. Whenever he finds a bright thing in your manuscript he strikes it out with that. That does him good, and makes him smile and show his teeth, the way he is doing in the picture. This one has just been striking out a smart thing, and now he is sitting there with his thumbs in his vest-holes, gloating. They are full of envy and malice, editors are.

I take my only exercise acting as a pallbearer at the funerals of my friends who exercise regularly.

there was no crime in unconscious plagiarism; that I committed it everyday, that he committed it everyday, that every man alive on earth who writes or speaks commits it every day and not merely once or twice but every time he open his mouth… there is nothing of our own in it except some slight change born of our temperament, character, environment, teachings and associations

You want to be very careful about lying; otherwise you are nearly sure to get caught.

Man can seldom - very, very, seldom - fight a winning fight against his training; the odds are too heavy.

There was a great difference in boats, of course. For a long time I was on a boat that was so slow we used to forget what year it was we left port in.

But it is a blessed provision of nature that at times like these, as soon as a man's mercury has got down to a certain point there comes a revulsion, and he rallies. Hope springs up, and cheerfulness along with it, and then he is in good shape to do something for himself, if anything can be done.

By trying we can easily learn to endure adversity. Another man's, I mean.

Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot. BY ORDER OF THE AUTHOR per G.G., CHIEF OF ORDNANCE

How often we recall with regret that Napoleon once shot at a magazine editor and missed him and killed a publisher. But we remember with charity that his intentions were good.

Only kings, presidents, editors, and people with tapeworms have the right to use the editorial 'we.'

There are three infallible ways of pleasing an author, and the three form a rising scale of compliment: 1, to tell him you have read one of his books; 2, to tell him you have read all of his books; 3, to ask him to let you read the manuscript of his forthcoming book. No. 1 admits you to his respect; No. 2 admits you to his admiration; No. 3 carries you clear into his heart.

The human race is a race of cowards; and I am not only marching in that procession but carrying a banner.

The gentle reader will never, never know what a consummate ass he can become until he goes abroad.

Of all God's creatures, there is only one that cannot be made slave of the leash. That one is the cat. If man could be crossed with the cat it would improve the man, but it would deteriorate the cat.

Nothing agrees with me. If I drink coffee, it gives me dyspepsia; if I drink wine, it gives me the gout; if I go to church, it gives me dysentery.

Scientists have odious manners, except when you prop up their theory; then you can borrow money off them.

The happy phrasing of a compliment is one of the rarest of human gifts, and the happy delivery of it another.

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.

Humor is the good natured side of a truth.

We can't reach old age by another man's road.

You can't reason with your heart; it has its own laws, and thumps about things which the intellect scorns.

It will take mind and memory months and possibly years to gather together the details, and thus learn and know the whole extent of the loss.

Do you reckon Tom Sawyer was satisfied after all them adventures?

The citizen who sees his society's democratic clothes being worn out and does not cry it out, is not a patriot, but a traitor.

I've come loaded with statistics, for I've noticed that a man can't prove anything without statistics. No man can.