Mark Twain

Quote link. Other quotes about: sun rain: "A banker is a fellow who lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining, but wants it back the minute it begins to rain."
Quote link. Other quotes about: class people book: "A classic is a book which people praise and don't read."
Quote link. Other quotes about: class something: "A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read."
Quote link. Other quotes about: live: "After all these years I see that I was mistaken about Eve in the beginning it is better to live outside the Garden with her than inside it without her."
Quote link. Other quotes about: nothing: "Against the assault of laughter, nothing can stand."
Quote link. Other quotes about: mind: "Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don't mind, it doesn't matter."
Quote link. Other quotes about: house perfect: "A house without a cat, and a well-fed, well-petted, and properly revered cat, may be a perfect house, perhaps, but how can it prove its title --from The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson"
Quote link. Other quotes about: human good need: "A human being has a natural desire to have more of a good thing than he needs."
Quote link. Other quotes about: truth world: "A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes."
Quote link.: "All schools, all colleges have two great functions to confer, and to conceal valuable knowledge. - Notebook, 1908"
Quote link. Other quotes about: ignorance life success need: "All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence then success is sure."
Quote link.: "Always acknowledge a fault. This will throw those in authority off their guard and give you an opportunity to commit more."
Quote link. Other quotes about: right people rest: "Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest."
Quote link. Other quotes about: man: "A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval."
Quote link. Other quotes about: believe man: "A man is accepted into church for what he believes--and turned out for what he knows."
Quote link. Other quotes about: something man: "A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way."
Quote link. Other quotes about: man: "A man with a new idea is a crank -- until the idea succeeds."
Quote link. Other quotes about: friend man good perfect: "An enemy can partly ruin a man, but it takes a good-natured injudicious friend to complete the thing and make it perfect."
Quote link. Other quotes about: america person: "An Englishman is a person who does things because they have been done before. An American is a person who does things because they haven't been done before."
Quote link. Other quotes about: world time hard: "A verb has a hard enough time of it in this world when it is all together. It's downright inhuman to split it up. But that's what those Germans do. They take part of a verb and put it down here, like a stake, and they take the other part of it and put it a way over yonder like another stake, and between these two limits they just shovel in German."
Quote link. Other quotes about: man honest look: "Barring that natural expression of villainy which we all have, the man looked honest enough."
Quote link. Other quotes about: books die book: "Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint."
Quote link. Other quotes about: good: "Be good and you will be lonesome."
Quote link. Other quotes about: money man wise: "Behold, the fool saith, Put not all thine eggs in the one basket, -- which is but a manner of saying, Scatter your money and your attention, but the wise man saith, Put all your eggs in the one basket and -- watch that basket."
Quote link. Other quotes about: man: "By trying we can easily learn to endure adversity. Another man's, I mean."
Quote link. Other quotes about: nothing education: "Cauliflower is nothing but Cabbage with a College Education."
Quote link.: "Civilization is a limitless multiplication of unnecessary necessaries."
Quote link. Other quotes about: little people man influence naked society: "Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society."
Quote link. Other quotes about: death: "Cold If the thermometer had been an inch longer we'd all have frozen to death"
Quote link. Other quotes about: fear: "Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear - not absence of fear."
Quote link.: "Denial ain't just a river in Egypt."
Quote link. Other quotes about: day first time teach: "Describing her first day back in grade school after a long absence, a teacher said, It was like trying to hold 35 corks under water at the same time."
Quote link. Other quotes about: first world nothing living: "Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first."
Quote link. Other quotes about: live: "Don't part with your illusions. When they are gone you may still exist, but you have ceased to live."
Quote link. Other quotes about: duty day something pain rule: "Do something every day that you don't want to do this is the golden rule for acquiring the habit of doing your duty without pain."
Quote link. Other quotes about: death fear: "Do the thing you fear most and the death of fear is certain."
Quote link. Other quotes about: man: "Drag your thoughts away from your troubles.. by the ears, by the heels, or any other way you can manage it."
Quote link.: "Education consists mainly in what we have unlearned. - Notebook, 1898"
Quote link. Other quotes about: speech: "Eloquence is the essential thing in a speech, not information."
Quote link.: "Everything has its limit--iron ore cannot be educated into gold. - 1906"
Quote link.: "Facts are stubborn, but statistics are more pliable."
Quote link. Other quotes about: children child: "Familiarity breeds contempt - and children."
Quote link. Other quotes about: sin: "Few sinners are saved after the fiirst twenty minutes of a sermon."
Quote link. Other quotes about: good hard: "Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example."
Quote link. Other quotes about: truth: "Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn't."
Quote link. Other quotes about: soul: "Friendship is the marriage of the soul, and this marriage is liable to divorce."
Quote link. Other quotes about: first fact: "Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please."
Quote link. Other quotes about: right something country: "Go and surprise the whole country by doing something right."
Quote link. Other quotes about: good walk: "Golf is a good walk spoiled."
Quote link. Other quotes about: think little person: "Good breeding consists of concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of the other person."
Quote link. Other quotes about: value: "Grief can take care of itself, but to get the full value of a joy you must have somebody to divide it with."
Quote link. Other quotes about: time man: "Habit is habit and not to be flung out of the window by any man, but coaxed downstairs a step at a time."
Quote link. Other quotes about: human man discover law: "He had discovered a great law of human action, without knowing it - namely, that in order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to obtain."
Quote link. Other quotes about: speech change mind: "He would come in and say he changed his mind -- which was a gilded figure of speech, because he didn't have any."
Quote link. Other quotes about: ignorance earth hard: "His ignorance covered the whole earth like a blanket, and there was hardly a hole in it anywhere."
Quote link. Other quotes about: money: "Honesty is the best policy - when there is money in it."
Quote link. Other quotes about: happy little: "How little a thing can make us happy when we feel that we have earned it."
Quote link. Other quotes about: man mankind: "Humor is mankind's greatest blessing."
Quote link. Other quotes about: sun: "Humor is the great thing, the saving thing. The minute it crops up, all our irritations and resentments slip away and a sunny spirit takes their place."
Quote link. Other quotes about: old never man: "I am an old man and have a great many troubles, But most of them never happened."
Quote link. Other quotes about: fact: "I am not one of those who in expressing opinions confine themselves to facts."
Quote link.: "I am opposed to millionaires, but it would be dangerous to offer me the position."
Quote link. Other quotes about: people sin mind single: "I cannot call to mind a single instance where I have ever been irreverent, except toward the things which were sacred to other people."
Quote link. Other quotes about: talk: "I cannot keep from talking, even at the risk of being instructive."
Quote link.: "I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying that I approved of it."
Quote link. Other quotes about: man: "I don't give a damn for a man that can only spell a word one way."
Quote link. Other quotes about: friend friends heaven: "I don't like to commit myself about heaven and hell you see, I have friends in both places."
Quote link. Other quotes about: christ: "If Christ were here now there is one thing he would not be--a christian."
Quote link. Other quotes about: man: "If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man."
Quote link. Other quotes about: truth: "If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything."
Quote link. Other quotes about: people: "I have a prejudice against people who print things in a foreign language and add no translation. When I am the reader, and the other considers me able to do the translating myself, he pays me the quite a nice compliment-- but if he would do the translating for me I would try to get along without the compliment. (A Tramp Abroad,1880)"
Quote link. Other quotes about: never rest sleep: "I have never taken any exercise except sleeping and resting."
Quote link. Other quotes about: history never life need influence: "Imagination is always the fabric of social life and the dynamic of history. The influence of real needs and compulsions, of real interests and materials, is indirect because the crowd is never conscious of it."
Quote link. Other quotes about: mind: "I must have a prodigious quantity of mind it takes me as much as a week, sometimes, to make it up."
Quote link. Other quotes about: never education: "I never let schooling interfere with my education."
Quote link. Other quotes about: never understand making: "In Paris they simply stared when I spoke to them in French I never did succeed in making those idiots understand their language."
Quote link. Other quotes about: people religion belief: "In religion and politics, people's beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second hand, and without examination."
Quote link. Other quotes about: people religion belief: "In religion and politics people's beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination, from authorities who have not themselves examined the questions at issue but have taken them at second-hand from other non-examiners, whose opinions about them were not worth a brass farthing."
Quote link. Other quotes about: god first: "In the first place, God made idiots. That was for practice. Then he made school boards."
Quote link.: "Irreverence is the champion of liberty and its one sure defense."
Quote link. Other quotes about: america class fact: "It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly American criminal class except Congress."
Quote link. Other quotes about: man: "I thoroughly disapprove of duels. If a man should challenge me, I would take him kindly and forgivingly by the hand and lead him to a quiet place and kill him."
Quote link.: "It is better to deserve honors and not have them than to have them and not deserve them."
Quote link. Other quotes about: think people: "It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt."
Quote link. Other quotes about: speech god never freedom good conscience country: "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."
Quote link. Other quotes about: physical world courage: "It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare."
Quote link. Other quotes about: mind: "It is discouraging to try and penetrate a mind like yours. You ought to get it out and dance on it. That would take some of the rigidity out of it."
Quote link.: "It is easier to stay out than get out."
Quote link. Other quotes about: speech teach: "It is noble to teach oneself, but still nobler to teach others--and less trouble. - speech, 1906"
Quote link.: "It is the difference of opinion that makes horse races."
Quote link. Other quotes about: die: "It's not that I'm afraid to die, I just don't want to be there when it happens."
Quote link.: "It's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog."
Quote link. Other quotes about: work friend: "It takes your enemy and your friend, working together, to hurt you the one to slander you, and the other to get the news to you."
Quote link. Other quotes about: speech good: "It usually takes more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech."
Quote link. Other quotes about: human: "It was enough to make a body ashamed of the human race."
Quote link. Other quotes about: america find: "It was wonderful to find America, but it would have been more wonderful to miss it."
Quote link. Other quotes about: think: "It were not best that we should all think alike it is the difference of opinion that makes horse races. - from Pudd'nhead Wilson"
Quote link. Other quotes about: man: "I've come loaded with statistics, for I've noticed that a man can't prove anything without statistics."
Quote link. Other quotes about: answer: "I was gratified to be able to answer promptly. I said I don't know."
Quote link. Other quotes about: books book good alone: "Just the omission of Jane Austen's books alone would make a fairly good library out of a library that hadn't a book in it."
Quote link. Other quotes about: small people: "Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great."
Quote link.: "Kindness is a language which the deaf can hear, and the blind can read."
Quote link. Other quotes about: human: "Language is a city to the building of which every human being brought a stone."
Quote link. Other quotes about: law: "Laws are sand, customs are rock. Laws can be evaded and punishment escaped but an openly transgressed custom brings sure punishment."
Quote link. Other quotes about: die live: "Let us so live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry."
Quote link. Other quotes about: hope lost old: "Lord save us all from old age and broken health and a hope tree that has lost the faculty of putting out blossoms."
Quote link. Other quotes about: man love woman married grow perfect: "Love seems the swiftest, but it is the slowest of growths. No man or woman really knows what perfect love is until they have been married a quarter of a century."
Quote link. Other quotes about: human never soul: "Loyalty to petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul."
Quote link. Other quotes about: need: "Man is the Only Animal that Blushes. Or needs to."
Quote link. Other quotes about: man love: "Man will do many things to get himself loved he will do all things to get himself envied."
Quote link. Other quotes about: small right: "Many a small thing has been made large by the right kind of advertising."
Quote link. Other quotes about: people understand: "Most people are bothered by those passages of Scripture they do not understand, but the passages that bother me are those I do understand."
Quote link. Other quotes about: think mother: "My mother had a great deal of trouble with me, but I think she enjoyed it."
Quote link. Other quotes about: mother: "Necessity is the mother of taking chances."
Quote link. Other quotes about: day: "Never put off until tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow."
Quote link. Other quotes about: people need: "Nothing so needs reforming as other people's habits."
Quote link.: "Often it does seem a pity that Noah and his party did not miss the boat."
Quote link. Other quotes about: truth: "Often, the surest way to convey misinformation is to tell the strict truth."
Quote link. Other quotes about: live: "One of the most striking differences between a cat and a lie is that a cat has only nine lives."
Quote link. Other quotes about: death peace love rich: "On his deathbed Death, the only immortal who treats us all alike, whose pity and whose peace and whose refuse are for all -- the soiled and the pure, the rich and the poor, the loved and the unloved."
Quote link.: "Our opinions do not really blossom into fruition until we have expressed them to someone else."
Quote link. Other quotes about: life success food: "Part of the secret of success in life is to eat what you like and let the food fight it out inside."
Quote link. Other quotes about: men wisdom: "Pessimism is only the name that men of weak nerve give to wisdom."
Quote link.: "Principles have no real force except when one is well-fed."
Quote link. Other quotes about: children child: "Providence protects children and idiots. I know because I have tested it."
Quote link. Other quotes about: time: "Quitting smoking is easy, I've done it hundreds of times."
Quote link. Other quotes about: believe think man wish: "Religion consists of a set of things which the average man thinks he believes and wishes he was certain."
Quote link. Other quotes about: human world: "Sane and intelligent human beings are like all other human beings, and carefully and cautiously and diligently conceal their private real opinions from the world and give out fictitious ones in their stead for general consumption."
Quote link. Other quotes about: money power god men: "Some men worship rank, some worship heroes, some worship power, some worship God, and over these ideals they dispute, but they all worship money."
Quote link. Other quotes about: people rest: "Some people get an eduction without going to college the rest get it after they get out."
Quote link. Other quotes about: day grow country: "Statistics show that we lose more fools on this day than on all other days of the year put together. This proves, by the numbers left in stock, that one Fourth of July per year is now inadequate, the country has grown so."
Quote link.: "Suppose you were an idiot, and suppose you were a member of congress but I repeat myself."
Quote link.: "The best way to cheer yourself up is to try to cheer somebody else up."
Quote link.: "The billiard table is better than the doctor."
Quote link. Other quotes about: right light: "The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug."
Quote link. Other quotes about: wrong right man fact: "The fact that man knows right from wrong proves his intellectual superiority to other creatures but the fact that he can do wrong proves his moral inferiority to any creature that cannot."
Quote link. Other quotes about: experience history truth hard: "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."
Quote link. Other quotes about: friendship money friend life nature friends: "The holy passion of Friendship is of so sweet and steady and loyal and enduring a nature that it will last through a whole lifetime, if not asked to lend money."
Quote link. Other quotes about: human: "The human race has one really effective weapon, and that is laughter."
Quote link. Other quotes about: books man book good: "The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them."
Quote link. Other quotes about: little man: "The man who is a pessimist before 48 knows too much if he is an optimist after it, he knows too little."
Quote link. Other quotes about: power: "The miracle, or the power, that elevates the few is to be found in their industry, application, and perseverance under the prompting of a brave, determined spirit."
Quote link. Other quotes about: wrong right friend: "The proper office of a friend is to side with you when you are wrong. Nearly anybody will side with you when you are right."
Quote link.: "The radical invents the views. When he has worn them out the conservative adopts them."
Quote link.: "The radical of one century is the conservative of the next. The radical invents the views. When he has worn them out the conservative adopts them."
Quote link. Other quotes about: lies: "There are lies, damned lies, and statistics."
Quote link. Other quotes about: people: "There are people who strictly deprive themselves of each and every eatable, drinkable, and smokable which has in any way acquired a shady reputation. They pay this price for health. And health is all they get for it. How strange it is. It is like paying out your whole fortune for a cow that has gone dry."
Quote link. Other quotes about: good: "There are several good protections against temptations, but the surest is cowardice."
Quote link. Other quotes about: books find right book: "There are some books that refuse to be written. They stand their ground year after year and will not be persuaded. It isn't because the book is not there and worth being written -- it is only because the right form of the story does not present itself. There is only one right form for a story and if you fail to find that form the story will not tell itself."
Quote link. Other quotes about: human time: "There are times when one would like to hang the whole human race and finish the farce."
Quote link. Other quotes about: time man life: "There are two times in a man's life when he should not speculate when he can't afford it, and when he can. - from Following the Equator"
Quote link. Other quotes about: america class: "There is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress."
Quote link. Other quotes about: young: "There is no sadder sight than a young pessimist."
Quote link.: "There is no such thing as the Queen's English. The property has gone into the hands of a joint stock company and we own the bulk of the shares"
Quote link. Other quotes about: talk nothing people: "There is nothing so annoying as to have two people talking when you're busy interrupting."
Quote link. Other quotes about: science something fact: "There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact."
Quote link. Other quotes about: death: "The report of my death was an exaggeration."
Quote link. Other quotes about: right time: "The right word may be effective, but no word was ever as effective as a rightly timed pause."
Quote link. Other quotes about: perfect rule: "The rule is perfect in all matters of opinion our adversaries are insane."
Quote link. Other quotes about: heaven: "The secret source of humour itself is not joy, but sorrow. There is no humour in heaven."
Quote link. Other quotes about: right man light: "The trouble isn't that there are too many fools, but that the lightning isn't distributed right."
Quote link. Other quotes about: brother man: "The universal brotherhood of man is our most precious possession."
Quote link. Other quotes about: history: "The very ink with which history is written is merely fluid prejudice."
Quote link.: "The worst loneliness is not to be comfortable with yourself."
Quote link. Other quotes about: hours time: "Time cools, time clarifies no mood can be maintained quite unaltered through the course of hours."
Quote link. Other quotes about: good teach: "To be good is noble, but to teach others how to be good is nobler--and less trouble."
Quote link. Other quotes about: time: "To cease smoking is the easiset thing I ever did. I ought to know, I've done it a thousand times."
Quote link. Other quotes about: first time: "Tomorrow night I appear for the first time before a Boston audience of 4000 critics."
Quote link. Other quotes about: nothing education: "Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education."
Quote link.: "Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness."
Quote link.: "Truth is more of a stranger than fiction."
Quote link. Other quotes about: discover: "Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover."
Quote link.: "Under certain circumstances, profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer."
Quote link. Other quotes about: music: "Wagner's music is better than it sounds."
Quote link.: "Water, taken in moderation, cannot hurt anybody."
Quote link.: "We are always more anxious to be distinguished for a talent which we do not possess, than to be praised for the fifteen which we do possess."
Quote link. Other quotes about: human first: "We are called the nation of inventors. And we are. We could still claim that title and wear its loftiest honors if we had stopped with the first thing we ever invented, which was human liberty."
Quote link. Other quotes about: prejudices happy change: "We are chameleons, and our partialities and prejudices change place with an easy and blessed facility, and we are soon wonted to the change and happy in it."
Quote link. Other quotes about: look: "We had the sky up there, and we used to lay on our backs and look up at them, and discuss whether they was made or just happened."
Quote link. Other quotes about: find day world men: "We have a criminal jury system which is superior to any in the world and its efficiency is only marred by the difficulty of finding twelve men every day who don't know anything and can't read."
Quote link. Other quotes about: experience never wisdom: "We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it - and stop there lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot stove-lid. She will never sit down on a hot stove-lid again - and that is well but also she will never sit down on a cold one anymore."
Quote link. Other quotes about: good: "What a good thing Adam had. When he said a good thing he knew nobody had said it before."
Quote link.: "What counts is not necessarily the size of the dog in the fight, what counts is the size of the fight in the dog."
Quote link. Other quotes about: people person: "When a person cannot deceive himself the chances are against his being able to deceive other people."
Quote link. Other quotes about: find time: "Whenever you find that you are on the side of the majority, it is time to reform."
Quote link. Other quotes about: find time: "Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it's time to pause and reflect."
Quote link. Other quotes about: truth: "When in doubt, tell the truth."
Quote link. Other quotes about: old man father hard: "When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years."
Quote link. Other quotes about: happy people today deep child look: "When I was a child people simply looked about them and were moderately happy today they peer beyond the seven seas, bury themselves waist deep in tidings, and by and large what they see and hear makes them unutterably sad."
Quote link. Other quotes about: young: "When I was younger, I could remember anything, whether it had happened or not."
Quote link.: "When one has tasted watermelon he knows what the angels eat."
Quote link. Other quotes about: life: "When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained."
Quote link.: "When you cannot get a compliment any other way pay yourself one."
Quote link. Other quotes about: truth: "Why shoudn't truth be stranger than fiction Fiction, after all, has to stick to the possibilities."
Quote link. Other quotes about: words: "Work and play are words used to describe the same thing under differing conditions."
Quote link.: "Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do. Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do."
Quote link. Other quotes about: evil: "Work is a necessary evil to be avoided."
Quote link.: "Wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been."
Quote link.: "You cannot depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus."
Quote link. Other quotes about: old: "Youth, large, lusty, loving- Youth, full of grace, force, fascination. Do you know that Old Age may come after you with equal grace, force, fascination"

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