Mark Twain Quotes

Many of the cemeteries are beautiful, and are kept in perfect order. When one goes from the levee or the business streets [of New Orleans] to it, to a cemetery, he observes to himself that if those people down there would live as neatly while they are alive as they do after they are dead, they would find many advantages in it; and besides, their quarter would be the wonder and admiration of the business world.

It was not that Adam ate the apple for the apple's sake, but because it was forbidden. It would have been better for us-oh infinitely better for us-if the serpent had been forbidden

To succeed in the other trades, capacity must be shown; in the law, concealment of it will do.

Do good when you can, and charge when you think they will stand it.

A good memory and a tongue tied in the middle is a combination which gives immortality to conversation.

The moral sense enables one to perceive morality, and avoid it. The immoral sense enables one to perceive immorality and enjoy it.

The Koran does not permit Mohammedans to drink. Their natural instincts do not permit them to be moral. They say the Sultan has eight hundred wives. This almost amounts to bigamy.

Senator: Person who makes laws in Washington when not doing time.

There is nothing but that frail breastwork of earth between the people and destruction.

I cannot see how a man of any large degree of humorous perception can ever be religious -- unless he purposely shut the eyes of his mind & keep them shut by force.

It's easy to make friends, but hard to get rid of them.

Sometimes people do get hurt

In America-as elsewhere-free speech is confined to the dead.

Sacred cows make the best hamburger.

There are two times in a man's life when he should not speculate: when he can't afford it, and when he can.

One gains at least two to three times more experience grabbing the tiger by the tail than reading about it in a book.

As one boy said, 'I was thinking all these horrible thoughts about my parents when suddenly it hit me-if they're all that bad, how come I'm so wonderful'

And what is a man without energy? Nothing - nothing at all.

Damn these human beings; if I had invented them I would go hide my head in a bag.

Really, what we want now, is not laws against crime, but a law against insanity. That is where the true evil lies.

The secret of making progress is to get started.

Facts are stubborn, but statistics are more pliable.

...ignorant as the unborne babe! ignorant as unborn twins!

Men think they think upon the great political questions, and they do; but they think with their party, not independently; they read its literature, but not that of the other side

The secret to success: find out where people are going and get there first

The educated Southerner has no use for an 'r', except at the beginning of a word.

Constellations have always been troublesome things to name. If you give one of them a fanciful name, it will always refuse to live up to it; it will always persist in not resembling the thing it has been named for.

Wagner has some great moments, but a lot of miserable half hours.

We like a man to come right out and say what he thinks- if we agree with him.

The difference between those that succeed and those that fail is, those that succeeded tried.

It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them.

Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society. You cannot depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus. As in the words of Wayne Dyer, when you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change. Sometimes to know with certainty that a particular thing is "true", will actually be the very thing that keeps you from attaining the things you seek to achieve.

When one reads Bibles, one is less surprised at what the Deity knows than at what He doesn't know.

It is agreed, in this country, that if a man can arrange his religion so that it perfectly satisfies his conscience, it is not incumbent on him to care whether the arrangement is satisfactory to anyone else or not.

If you have no will to change it, you have no right to criticize it.

If there are no cigars in heaven, I shall not go.

Be virtuous and you will be eccentric.

The observance of Thanksgiving Day-as a function-has become general of late years. The Thankfulness is not so general. This is natural. Two-thirds of the nation have always had hard luck and a hard time during the year, and this has a calming effect upon their enthusiasm.

I am quite sure now that often, very often, in matters concerning religion and politics a man's reasoning powers are not above the monkey's.

The history of our race, and each individual’s experience, are sown thick with evidence that a truth is not hard to kill and that a lie told well is immortal.

The critic's symbol should be the tumble-bug: he deposits his egg in somebody else's dung, otherwise he could not hatch it.

All I say is, kings is kings, and you got to make allowances. Take them all around, they're a mighty ornery lot. It's the way they're raised.

We had a sunset of a very fine sort. The vast plain of the sea was marked off in bands of sharply-contrasted colors: great stretches of dark blue, others of purple, others of polished bronze; the billowy mountains showed all sorts of dainty browns and greens, blues and purples and blacks, and the rounded velvety backs of certain of them made one want to stroke them, as one would the sleek back of a cat.

Information appears to stew out of me naturally, like the precious otter of roses out of the otter.

Suddenly the nickel-clad horse takes the bit in its mouth and goes slanting for the curbstone defying all prayers and all your powers to change its mind - your heart stands still, your breath hangs fire, your legs forget to work.

I have been born more times than anybody except Krishna.

She is not refined. She is not unrefined. She keeps a parrot

Name the greatest of all inventors. Accident.