Mark Twain Quotes

Steal a chicken if you get a chance, Huck, because if you don't want it, someone else does and a good deed ain't never forgotten.

I love to revel in philosophical matters-especially astronomy. I study astronomy more than any other foolishness there is. I am a perfect slave to it. I am at it all the time. I have got more smoked glass than clothes. I am as familiar with the stars as the comets are. I know all the facts and figures and have all the knowledge there is concerning them. I yelp astronomy like a sun-dog, and paw the constellations like Ursa Major.

You can tell German wine from vinegar by the label.

Adam was the author of sin, and I wish he had taken out an international copyright on it.

It is a wise child that knows its own father, and an unusual one that unreservedly approves of him.

Never argue with people who buy ink by the gallon.

I bring you this stately matron named Christendom, returning bedraggled, besmirched, and dishonored from pirate raids in Kiao-Chow, Manchuria, South Africa, and the Phillipines, with her soul full of meanness, her pocket full of boodle, and her mouth full of pious hypocrisies. Give her soap and a towel, but hide the looking-glass.

I was educated once - it took me years to get over it.

Faith is believing things you know aint true

If Christians should vote their duty to God at the polls, they would carry every election, and do it with ease. They would elect every clean candidate in the United States, and defeat every soiled one. Their prodigious power would be quickly realized and recognized, and afterward there would be no unclean candidates upon any ticket, and graft would cease.

Wherein lies a poet's claim to originality? That he invents his incidents? No. That he was present when his episodes had their birth? No. That he was first to repeat them? No. None of these things has any value. He confers on them their only originality that has any value, and that is his way of telling them.

There are too many stars in some places and not enough in others.

Just because you’re taught that something’s right and everyone believes it’s right, it don’t make it right.

I have learned that there lies dormant in the souls of all men a penchant for some particular musical instrument an an unsuspected yearning to play on it, which are bound to wake up an demand attention someday. Therefore you who rail at such that disturb your slumbers with unsuccessful and demoralizing attempts to subjugate a guitar, beware! For sooner or later your own time will come.

Use the right word, not its second cousin.

It is so unsatisfactory to read a noble passage and have no one you love at hand to share the happiness with you. And it is unsatisfactory to read to one's self anyhow - for the uttered voice so heightens the expression.

Missionarying was a better thing in those days than it is in ours. All you had to do was to cure the head savage´s sick daughter by a miracle- a miracle like the miracle of Lourdes in our day, for instance- and immediately that head savage was your convert, and filled to the eyes with a new convert´s enthusiasm. You could sit down and make yourself easy now. He would take the ax and convert the rest of the nation himself.

Warm summer sun, shine kindly here.

When even the brightest mind in our world has been trained up from childhood in a superstition of any kind, it will never be possible for that mind, in its maturity, to examine sincerely, dispassionately, and conscientiously any evidence or any circumstance which shall seem to cast a doubt upon the validity of that superstition. I doubt if I could do it myself.

To be busy is man's only happiness.

Never waste a lie; you never know when you may need it.

My father was a Saint Bernard, my mother was a Collie, but I am a Presbyterian.

It is better to be a young June-bug than an old bird of paradise.

The new political gospel: public office is private graft.

Truth is mighty and will prevail. There is nothing wrong with this, except that it ain't so.

Be respectful to your superiors, if you have any.

If you send a damned fool to St. Louis, and you don't tell them he's a damned fool, they'll never find out.

In religion, India is the only millionaire... the One land that all men desire to see, and having seen once, by even a glimpse, would not give that glimpse for all the shows of all the rest of the globe combined.

We may not doubt that society in heaven consists mainly of undesirable persons.

We have not all had the good fortune to be ladies. We have not all been generals, or poets, or statesmen; but when the toast works down to the babies, we stand on common ground.

We must look for our own blame to find our own personality.

Who is this Renaissance? Where did he come from? Who gave him permission to cram the Republic with his execrable daubs?

There are many scapegoats for our sins, but the most popular one is Providence.

A public library is the most enduring of memorials, the trustiest monument for the preservation of an event or a name or an affection; for it, and it only, is respected by wars and revolutions, and survives them.

You cant reach old age by another man's road, my habits protect my life but they would assassinate you

It may have happened, it may not have happened but it could have happened.

Every inventor is a crackpot until his idea succeeds.

As a thinker and planner the ant is the equal of any savage race of men; as a self-educated specialist in several arts she is the superior of any savage race of men; and in one or two high mental qualities she is above the reach of any man, savage or civilized!

Half of the results of a good intentions are evil; half the results of an evil intention are good.

If you tell the truth you do not need a good memory!

No man that has ever lived has done a thing to please God--primarily. It was done to please himself, then God next.

If it would not look too much like showing off, I would tell the reader where New Zealand is.

One must travel, to learn. Every day, now, old Scriptural phrases that never possessed any significance for me before, take to themselves a meaning.

Put no trust in the benefits to accrue from early rising, as set forth by the infatuated Franklin.

Patriotism is usually the refuge of the scoundrel. He is the man who talks the loudest.

America cannot have an empire abroad and a Republic at home.

If you don't like the weather in New England now, just wait a few minutes.

Grown people everywhere are always likely to cling to the religion they were brought up in.