Mark Twain Quotes

Vote: The only commodity that is peddleable without a license.

There are some few people I respect and admire, but I don't think much of the species.

That optimist of yours is always ready to turn hell's backyard into a play-ground.

I have tried getting up early, and I have tried getting up late-and the latter agrees with me best.

There are only two forces that can carry light to all the corners of the globe... the sun in the heavens and the Associated Press down here.

There is nothing like instances to grow hair on a bald-headed argument.

There are many humorous things in the world; among them, the white man's notion that he is less savage than the other savages.

Heroine: Girl in a book who is saved from drowning by a hero and marries him next week, but if it was to be over again ten years later it is likely she would rather have a life-belt and he would rather have her have it. Hero: Person in a book who does things which he can't and girl marries him for it.

Never put off until tomorrow what you can avoid altogether. A clean desk is a sign of a cluttered desk drawer. All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence, and then success is sure.

I have been on the verge of being an angel all my life, but it's never happened yet.

A sin takes on a new and real terror when there seems a chance that it is going to be found out.

He was endowed with a stupidity which by the least little stretch would go around the globe four times and tie.

I was standing in our dining-room thinking of nothing in particular, when a cablegram was put into my hand. It said, 'Susy was peacefully released today.' It is one of the mysteries of our nature that a man, all unprepared, can receive a thunder-stroke like that and live.

Don't you know that the very thing a man dreads is the thing that always happens?

Go and surprise the whole country by doing something right.

Learn from the mistakes of others - you won't live long enough to make them all yourself. He's opposed to millionaires, but it would be dangerous to offer him the position.

I thought tamarinds were made to eat, but that was probably not the idea. I ate several, and it seemed to me that they were rather sour that year. They pursed up my lips, till they resembled the stem-end of a tomato, and I had to take my sustenance through a quill for twenty-four hours. They sharpened my teeth till I could have shaved with them, and gave them a 'wire edge' that I was afraid would stay; but a citizen said 'no, it will come off when the enamel does' - which was comforting, at any rate. I found, afterward, that only strangers eat tamarinds - but they only eat them once.

A joke, even if it be a lame one, is nowhere so keenly relished or quickly applauded as in a murder trial.

In God We Trust. I don't believe it would sound any better if it were true.

The man who doesn't read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them. It is said that leaders are readers. However if they read trashy magazines for the majority of their time and they never run with the information that they glean from resourceful books, then they may as well have not taken any time to read at all. It is easier to stay out than get out.

It is just like man's vanity and impertinence to call an animal dumb because it is dumb to his dull perceptions.

Begin with the determination to succeed and the work is half done already.

A man with a hump-backed uncle mustn't make fun of another man's cross-eyed aunt

After my marriage she edited everything I wrote. And what is more, she not only edited my works, she edited me.

I could forgive the boy, now, if he'd committed a million sins!

Nothing seems to please a fly so much as to be taken for a currant; and if it can be baked in a cake and palmed off on the unwary, it dies happy.

You are about as happy as you make up your mind to be.

Italy is the home of art and swindling; home of religion and moral rottenness

But it was ever thus, all through my life: whenever I have diverged from custom and principle and uttered a truth, the rule has been that the hearer hadn't strength of mind enough to believe it.

It is a good and gentle religion, but inconvenient.

Astonishing things can be done with the human memory if you will devote it faithfully to one particular line of business.

There's plenty of boys that will come hankering and gruvvelling around when you've got an apple, and beg the core off you; but when they're got one, and you beg for the core, and remind them how you give them a core one time, they take a mouth at you, and say thank you 'most to death, but there ain't a-going to be no core.

The right word may be effective, but no word was ever as effective as a rightly timed pause.

Don't go to sleep, so many people die there.

I should have been glad to acquire some sort of idea of Hindu theology, ... but the difficulties were too great.

None but an ass pays a compliment and asks a favour at the same time. There are many asses.

There are two reasons why anybody buys anything. The real reason, and the reason they give you.

If you want to change the future, you must change what you're doing in the present.

Do not complain about growing old. It is a privilege denied to many.

When you catch an adjective, kill it.

You can go to heaven if you want. I'd rather stay in Bermuda.

It is a mistake that there is no bath that will cure people's manners, but drowning would help.

Write without pay until somebody offers to pay.

Priapism is what happens when someone gets strangulated to the point of hypoxia.

What is the chief end of man?-to get rich. In what way?-dishonestly if we can; honestly if we must.

Nothing helps scenery like bacon and eggs.

If I had been helping the Almighty when he created man, I would have had him begin at the other end, and start human beings with old age. How much better to start old and have all the bitterness and blindness of age in the beginning!

It was the schoolboy who said, ""Faith is believing what you know ain't so.""