Mark Twain Quotes

There is a charm about the forbidden that makes it unspeakably desirable.

The ordinary chestnut can beget a sickly and reluctant laugh, but it takes a horse chestnut to fetch the gorgeous big horse-laugh.

You take the lies out of him, and he'll shrink to the size of your hat; you take the malice out of him, and he'll disappear.

The time to begin writing an article is when you have finished it to your satisfaction. By that time you begin to clearly and logically perceive what it is you really want to say.

We all do no end of feeling, and we mistake it for thinking. And out of it we get an aggregation which we consider a boon. Its name is public opinion. It is held in reverence. Some think it the voice of God.

Wit is the sudden marriage of ideas which before their union were not perceived to have any relation.

The gods offer no rewards for intellect. There was never one yet that showed any interest in it.

Biographies are but the clothes and buttons of the man. The biography of the man himself cannot be written.

Demagogue--a vessel containing beer and other liquids.

All emotion is involuntary when genuine.

It consists mainly of the storm of thoughts that is forever blowing through one's head.

We do not get ice-cream every where, and so, when we do, we are apt to dissipate to excess.

Children and fools always speak the truth

There are things which some people never attempt during their whole lives, but one of these is not poetry. Poetry attacks all human beings sooner or later, and, like the measles, is mild or violent according to the age of the sufferer.

Hotels are the only proper places for lecturers. When I am ill-natured I so enjoy the freedom of a hotel where I can ring up a domestic and give him a quarter and then break furniture over him.

Honesty is often the best policy, but sometimes the appearance of it is worth six of it.

Necessity is the mother of taking chances.

If we should deal out justice only, in this world, who would escape? No, it is better to be generous, and in the end more profitable, for it gains gratitude for us, and love.

Life is short. Forgive quickly, kiss slowly and love truly.

The timid man yearns for full value and demands a tenth. The bold man strikes for double value and compromises on par.

Let your joy be unconfined!

I am not interested to know whether vivisection produces results that are profitable to the human race or doesn't...The pain which it inflicts upon unconsenting animals is the basis of my enmity toward it, and it is to me sufficient justification of the enmity without looking further.

I have been an author for 20 years and an ass for 55.

Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.

If smoking cigars is not permitted in heaven, I won''t go.

Seasickness: at first you are so sick you are afraid you will die, and then you are so sick you are afraid you won't die.

The institution of royalty in any form is an insult to the human race.

The highest perfection of politeness is only a beautiful edifice, built, from the base to the dome, of ungraceful and gilded forms of charitable and unselfish lying.

A dream...I was trying to explain to St. Peter, and was doing it in the German tongue, because I didn't want to be too explicit.

It liberates the vandal to travel-you never saw a bigoted, opinionated, stubborn, narrow-minded, self-conceited, almighty mean man in your life but he had stuck in one place since he was born and thought God made the world and dyspepsia and bile for his especial comfort and satisfaction.

Some of the worst things in my life never even happened.

Note that venerable proverb: Children and fools always speak the truth. The deduction is plain: adults and wise persons never speak it.

A man accustomed to American food and American domestic cookery would not starve to death suddenly in Europe, but I think he would gradually waste away, and eventually die.

From his cradle to his grave a man never does a single thing which has any FIRST AND FOREMOST object but one -- to secure peace of mind, spiritual comfort, for HIMSELF.

An occultation of Venus is not half so difficult as an eclipse of the sun, but because it comes seldom the world thinks it's a grand thing.

No child should be permitted to grow up without exercise for imagination. It enriches life for him. It makes things wonderful and beautiful.

When I was younger I could remember anything, whether it happened or not.

Writing is the easiest thing in the world.... Just try it sometime. I sit up with a pipe in my mouth and a board on my knees and I scribble away.

All war must be just the killing of strangers against whom you feel no personal animosity; strangers whom, in other circumstances, you would help if you found them in trouble, and who would help you if you needed it.

Now what I contend is that my body is my own, at least I have always so regarded it. If I do harm through my experimenting with it, it is I who suffer, not the state.

Ours is a terrible religion. The fleets of the world could swim in spacious comfort in the innocent blood it has spilt.

The smallest minds and the selfishest souls and the cowardliest hearts that God makes.

I can teach anybody how to get what they want out of life. The problem is that I can't find anybody who can tell me what they want.

No man has an appreciation so various that his judgment is good upon all varieties of literary work.

The xmas holidays have this high value: that they remind Forgetters of the Forgotten, & repair damaged relationships.

Everything human is pathetic. The secret source of humor itself is not joy but sorrow. There is no humor in heaven.

Comparison is the death of joy.

Presbyterianism without infant damnation would be like the dog on the train that couldn't be identified because it had lost its tag.