Mark Twain Quotes

In the South the war is what A.D. is elsewhere; they date from it.

There was never yet an uninteresting life. Such a thing is an impossibility. Inside of the dullest exterior there is a drama, a comedy, and a tragedy.

Sometimes too much to drink is barely enough.

Human beings are the only creatures who blush - or who need to.

History may not repeat, but it often rhymes.

...there isn't often anything in Wagner opera that one would call by such a violent name as acting.

Now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions. Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual.

God made all the animals in a single day; he could have swept them all away in the flood and re-created them in one day when they were again needed. Therefore it was an odd idea to save specimens of them for eleven months in the ark, whilst aware that eight persons could not feed or water them by any human possibility. If they were to be preserved by miracle, the ark was not necessary - to let them swim would have answered the purpose and been more indubitably miraculous.

The ability to find solutions to life's challenges is what makes us grow as a person.

If you shamefully misuse a cat once she will always maintain a dignified reserve toward you afterward. You will never get her full confidence again.

No sane man can be happy, for to him life is real, and he sees what a fearful thing it is.

One holds a bottle of red wine by the neck, a woman by the waist, and a bottle of champagne by the derriere.

Our most valuable and most instructive materials in the history of man are treasured up in India.

Optimist: day dreamer more elegantly spelled.

I prefer milk because I am a Prohibitionist, but I do not go to it for inspiration.

Recipe for a long life: Only smoke while awake. Only run when being chased.

Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured.

The Book of Mormon is chloroform in print

A banker is somebody who lends you an umbrella & takes it away as soon as it starts raining.

I speak French with timidity, and not flowingly--except when excited. When using that language I have often noticed that I have hardly ever been mistaken for a Frenchman, except, perhaps, by horses; never, I believe, by people.

The average American's simplest and commonest form of breakfast consists of coffee and beefsteak.

I have stopped smoking now and then, for a few months at a time, but it was not on principle, it was only to show off; it was to pulverize those critics who said I was a slave to my habits and couldn't break my bonds.

No throne exists that has a right to exist, and no symbol of it, flying from any flagstaff, is righteously entitled to wear any device but the skull and crossbones of that kindred industry which differs from royalty only businesswise-merely as retail differs from wholesale.

Many a small thing has been made large by the right kind of advertising.

A sense of humor is the one thing no one will admit to not having.

It usually takes more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech. Overnight success is a fallacy. It is preceded by a great deal of preparation. Ask any successful person how they came to this point in their lives, and they will have a story to tell.

Love heightens all senses - except the common.

A banquet is probably the most fatiguing thing in the world except ditch digging.

The statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting the blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception.

Books are for people who wish they were somewhere else.

Don't wrestle with pigs. You both get dirty and the pig likes it.

We are always hearing of people who are around seeking after the Truth. I have never seen a (permanent) specimen. I think he has never lived. But I have seen several entirely sincere people who thought they were (permanent) Seekers after the Truth. They sought diligently, persistently, carefully, cautiously, profoundly, with perfect honesty and nicely adjusted judgment- until they believed that without doubt or question they had found the Truth. That was the end of the search. The man spent the rest of his hunting up shingles wherewith to protect his Truth from the weather.

My advice to girls: first, don't smoke - to excess; second, don't drink - to excess; third, don't marry - to excess.

We are discreet sheep; we wait to see how the drove is going, and then go with the drove.

Choosing not to read is like closing an open door to paradise

Some civilized women would lose half their charm without dress and some would lose all of it.

A powerful agent is the right word: it lights the reader's way and makes it plain.

The idea that no gentleman ever swears is all wrong. He can swear and still be a gentleman if he does it in a nice and benevolent and affectionate way.

Eat a live frog first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day.

A man is never more truthful than when he acknowledges himself a liar.

Some people give their problems swimming lessons instead of drowning them.

The trouble ain't that there is too many fools, but that the lightning ain't distributed right.

He gossips habitually; he lacks the common wisdom to keep still that deadly enemy of man, his own tongue.

I am personally acquainted with hundreds of journalists, and the opinion of the majority of them would not be worth tuppence in private, but when they speak in print it is the newspaper that is talking (the pygmy scribe is not visible) and then their utterances shake the community like the thunders of prophecy.

There are several kinds of stories, but only one difficult kind-the humorous.

Every person is a book, each year a chapter.

A baby is an inestimable blessing and bother.

Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand.