Famous Mark Twain Quotations

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"Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself."
by Mark Twain
"Many a small thing has been made large by the right kind of advertising."
by Mark Twain
"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."
by Mark Twain
"It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt."
by Mark Twain
"It is better to deserve honors and not have them than to have them and not deserve them."
by Mark Twain
"It is easier to stay out than get out."
by Mark Twain
"It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare."
by Mark Twain
"I have never taken any exercise except sleeping and resting."
by Mark Twain
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education."
by Mark Twain
"What a good thing Adam had. When he said a good thing he knew nobody had said it before."
by Mark Twain
"Man is the only animal that blushes - or needs to."
by Mark Twain
"My mother had a great deal of trouble with me, but I think she enjoyed it."
by Mark Twain
"Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see."
by Mark Twain
"The first of April is the day we remember what we are the other 364 days of the year."
by Mark Twain
"It was wonderful to find America, but it would have been more wonderful to miss it."
by Mark Twain
"Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint."
by Mark Twain
"The rule is perfect: in all matters of opinion our adversaries are insane."
by Mark Twain
"The right word may be effective, but no word was ever as effective as a rightly timed pause."
by Mark Twain
"Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example."
by Mark Twain
"Familiarity breeds contempt - and children."
by Mark Twain
"Thousands of geniuses live and die undiscovered - either by themselves or by others."
by Mark Twain
"A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way."
by Mark Twain
"Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand."
by Mark Twain
"The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them."
by Mark Twain
"The lack of money is the root of all evil."
by Mark Twain
"The public is the only critic whose opinion is worth anything at all."
by Mark Twain
"There are times when one would like to hang the whole human race, and finish the farce."
by Mark Twain
"There are lies, damned lies, and statistics."
by Mark Twain
"Thunder is good, thunder is impressive; but it is lightning that does the work."
by Mark Twain
"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbour. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover."
by Mark Twain
"Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't."
by Mark Twain
"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."
by Mark Twain
"We are all alike, on the inside."
by Mark Twain
"We have the best government that money can buy."
by Mark Twain
"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."
by Mark Twain
"When I was younger, I could remember anything, whether it had happened or not."
by Mark Twain
"When people do not respect us we are sharply offended; yet deep down in his private heart no man much respects himself."
by Mark Twain
"Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it's time to pause and reflect."
by Mark Twain
"Wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been."
by Mark Twain
"Work and play are words used to describe the same thing under differing conditions."
by Mark Twain
"Always acknowledge a fault. This will throw those in authority off their guard and give you an opportunity to commit more."
by Mark Twain
"Apparently there is nothing that cannot happen today."
by Mark Twain
"Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first."
by Mark Twain
"Humor must not professedly teach and it must not professedly preach, but it must do both if it would live forever."
by Mark Twain
"I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it."
by Mark Twain
"I can live for two months on a good compliment."
by Mark Twain
"It is just like man's vanity and impertinence to call an animal dumb because it is dumb to his dull perceptions."
by Mark Twain
"Man was made at the end of the week's work when God was tired."
by Mark Twain
"Let us endeavor so to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry."
by Mark Twain
"Let us be thankful for the fools. But for them the rest of us could not succeed."
by Mark Twain
"Necessity is the mother of taking chances."
by Mark Twain
"Nothing so needs reforming as other people's habits."
by Mark Twain
"Part of the secret of success in life is to eat what you like and let the food fight it out inside."
by Mark Twain
"Prosperity is the best protector of principle."
by Mark Twain
"It's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog."
by Mark Twain
"In the first place, God made idiots. That was for practice. Then he made school boards."
by Mark Twain
"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."
by Mark Twain
"I never could tell a lie that anybody would doubt, nor a truth that anybody would believe."
by Mark Twain
"I am opposed to millionaires, but it would be dangerous to offer me the position."
by Mark Twain
"I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened."
by Mark Twain
"It usually takes more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech."
by Mark Twain
"Do the thing you fear most and the death of fear is certain."
by Mark Twain
"All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence; then success is sure."
by Mark Twain
"Friendship is the marriage of the soul, and this marriage is liable to divorce."
by Mark Twain
"Ideally a book would have no order to it, and the reader would have to discover his own."
by Mark Twain
"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."
by Mark Twain
"Sacred cows make the best hamburgers."
by Mark Twain
"'Familiarity breeds contempt - and children."
by Mark Twain
"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."
by Mark Twain, What Is Man? (1906)
"'Classic.' A book which people praise and don't read."
by Mark Twain
"'When angry, count four; when very angry, swear."
by Mark Twain
"'One of the most striking differences between a cat and a lie is that a cat has only nine lives."
by Mark Twain
"[Mankind] is governed by minorities, seldom or never by majorities. It suppresses its feelings and its beliefs and follows the handful that makes the most noise. Sometimes the noisy handful is right, sometimes wrong, but no matter, the crowd follows it."
by Mark Twain
"[Humanity] has unquestionably one really effective weapon—laughter. Power, money, persuasion, supplication, persecution—these can lift at a colossal humbug—push it a little—weaken it a little, century by century; but only laughter can blow it to rags and atoms at a blast. Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand."
by Mark Twain
"[He was] a solemn, unsmiling, sanctimonious old iceberg who looked like he was waiting for a vacancy in the Trinity."
by Mark Twain
"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."
by Mark Twain
"A baby is an inestimable blessing and bother"
by Mark Twain
"A Classic is something that everyone wants to have read but nobody wants to read."
by Mark Twain
"A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read."
by Mark Twain
"A classic is a book which people praise and don't read."
by Mark Twain
"A human being has a natural desire to have more of a good thing than he needs."
by Mark Twain
"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"
by Mark Twain
"A lie can travel halfway round the world while the truth is putting on its shoes."
by Mark Twain
"A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes."
by Mark Twain
"A man is accepted into church for what he believes--and turned out for what he knows."
by Mark Twain
"A man with a new idea is a crank -- until the idea succeeds."
by Mark Twain
"A man never reaches that dizzy height of wisdom that he can no longer be led by the nose."
by Mark Twain
"A man is never more truthful than when he acknowledges himself a liar."
by Mark Twain
"A man's character may be learned from the adjectives which he habitually uses in conversation."
by Mark Twain
"A person with a new idea is a crank until the idea succeeds."
by Mark Twain
"A person with a new idea is a crank until the idea succeeds"
by Mark Twain
"A person who won't read has no advantage over one who can't read."
by Mark Twain
"A patriot is mocked, scorned and hated; yet when his cause succeeds, all men will join him, for then it costs nothing to be a patriot."
by Mark Twain
"A round man cannot be expected to fit in a square hole right away. He must have time to modify his shape."
by Mark Twain
"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."
by Mark Twain
"Action speaks louder than words but not nearly as often."
by Mark Twain
"Adam was the only man who, when he said a good thing, knew that nobody had said it before him"
by Mark Twain
"Adam was but human - this explains it all. He did not want the apple for the apple’s sake, he wanted it only because it was forbidden. The mistake was in not forbidding the serpent; then he would have eaten the serpent."
by Mark Twain
"Adam and Eve had many advantages, but the principle one was that they escaped teething."
by Mark Twain
"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."
by Mark Twain


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