Mark Twain Humor Quotations

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

I have never examined the subject of humor until now. I am surprised to find how much ground it covers. I have got its divisions and frontiers down on a piece of paper. I find it defined as a production of the brain, as the power of the brain to produce something humorous, and the capacity of percieving humor.

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

I reverently believe that the maker who made us all makes everything in New England, but the weather. I don't know who makes that, but I think it must be raw apprentices in the weather-clerks factory who experiment and learn how, in New England, for board and clothes, and then are promoted to make weather for countries that require a good article, and will take their custom elsewhere if they don't get it.

I wasn't worth a cent two years ago, and now I owe two million dollars.

Few things are more irritating than when someone who is wrong is also very effective in making his point.

They spell it da Vinci and pronounce it da Vinchy. Foreigners always spell better than they pronounce.

But soft you, the fair Ophelia: Ope not thy ponderous and marble jaws, But get thee to a nunnery - go!

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

The Creator made Italy from designs by Michelangelo.

The inability to forget is far more devastating than the inability to remember.

English humor is hard to appreciate, though, unless you are trained to it. The English papers, in reporting my speeches, always put 'laughter' in the wrong place.

Humor, to be comprehensible to anybody, must be built upon a foundation with which he is familiar. If he can't see the foundation the superstructure is to him merely a freak -- like the Flatiron building without any visible means of support -- something that ought to be arrested.

What is it that strikes a spark of humor from a man? It is the effort to throw off, to fight back the burden of grief that is laid on each one of us. In youth we don't feel it, but as we grow to manhood we find the burden on our shoulders. Humor? It is nature's effort to harmonize conditions. The further the pendulum swings out over woe the further it is bound to swing back over mirth.

The true and lasting genius of humour does not drag you thus to boxes labelled 'pathos,' 'humour,' and show you all the mechanism of the inimitable puppets that are going to perform. How I used to laugh at Simon Tapperwit, and the Wellers, and a host more! But I can't do it now somehow; and time, it seems to me, is the true test of humour. It must be antiseptic.

Probably there is an imperceptible touch of something permanent that one feels instinctively to adhere to true humour, whereas wit may be the mere conversational shooting up of "smartness"--a bright feather, to be blown into space the second after it is launched...Wit seems to be counted a very poor relation to Humour....Humour is never artificial.

I pity the fellow who has to create a dialect or paraphrase the dictionary to get laughs. I can't spell, but I have never stooped to spell cat with a 'k' to get at your funny bone. I love a drink, but I never encouraged drunkenness by harping on its alleged funny side.

So you see, the quality of humor is not a personal or a national monopoly. It's as free as salvation, and, I am afraid, far more widely distributed. But it has its value, I think. The hard and sordid things of life are too hard and too sordid and too cruel for us to know and touch them year after year without some mitigating influence, some kindly veil to draw over them, from time to time, to blur the craggy outlines, and make the thorns less sharp and the cruelties less malignant.

Humor must be one of the chief attributes of God. Plants and animals that are distinctly humorous in form and characteristics are God's jokes.

The humorous writer professes to awaken and direct your love, your pity, your kindness--your scorn for untruth, pretension, imposture....He takes upon himself to be the week-day preacher.

When a man's dog turns against hime, it is time for his wife to pack her trunk and go home to mamma.

The humorous story is American, the comic story is English, the witty story is French. The humorous story depends for its effect upon the manner of the telling;the comic and the witty story upon the matter.

Always obey your parents - when they are present.

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

In Paris they just simply opened their eyes and stared when we spoke to them in French! We never did succeed in making those idiots understand their own language.

whenever the literary german dives into a sentence, this is the last you are going to see of him till he emerges on the other side of his atlantic with his verb in his mouth.

If you can't get a compliment any other way, pay yourself one.

Humor is the good natured side of a truth.

Laughter without a tinge of philosophy is but a sneeze of humor. Genuine humor is replete with wisdom.

April 1. This is the day upon which we are reminded of what we are on the other three hundred and sixty-four..

The only difference between a tax man and a taxidermist is that the taxidermist leaves the skin.

Hain't we got all the fools in town on our side? And hain't that a big enough majority in any town?

Humor must not professedly teach and it must not professedly preach, but it must do both if it would live forever.

There ought to be a room in every house to swear in. It's dangerous to have to repress an emotion like that.

I have witnessed and greatly enjoyed the first act of everything which Wagner created, but the effect on me has always been so powerful that one act was quite sufficient; whenever I have witnessed two acts I have gone away physically exhausted; and whenever I have ventured an entire opera the result has been the next thing to suicide.

Diligence is a good thing, but taking things easy is much more restful.

A cat is more intelligent than people believe, and can be taught any crime.

We have a criminal jury system which is superior to any in the world and it's efficiency is only marred by the difficulty of finding twelve men every day who don't know anything and can't read-

A home without a cat — and a well-fed, well-petted and properly revered cat — may be a perfect home, perhaps, but how can it prove title?

Wit and Humor -- if any difference, it is in duration -- lightning and electric light. Same material, apparently; but one is vivid, and can do damage -- the other fools along and enjoys elaboration.

There are many humorous things in the world; among them, the white man's notion that he is less savage than the other savages.

Humor is the great thing, the saving thing after all. The minute it crops up, all our hardnesses yield, all our irritations, and resentments flit away, and a sunny spirit takes their place.

There are many humorous things in the world, among them the white man's notion that he is less savage than the other savages

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.

Humorists of the 'mere' sort cannot survive. Humor is only a fragrance, a decoration.

The funniest things are the forbidden.

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.

The humorous story is told gravely; the teller does his best to conceal the fact that he even dimly suspects that there is anything funny about it.

... an experienced, industrious, ambitious, and often quite often picturesque liar.

... all the modern inconveniences ...

It is no harm to be an ass, if one is content to bray and not kick.

I have never heard enough classical music to be able to enjoy it; & the simple truth is, I detest it. Not mildly, but will all my heart. To me an opera is the very climax & cap-stone of the absurd, the fantastic the unjustifiable. I hate the very name of opera - partly because of the nights of suffering I have endured in its presence, & partly because I want to love it and can't.

I have attended operas, whenever I could not help it, for fourteen years now; I am sure I know of no agony comparable to the listening to an unfamiliar opera.

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

The humorist who invented trial by jury played a colossal practical joke upon the world, but since we have the system we ought to try and respect it. A thing which is not thoroughly easy to do, when we reflect that by command of the law a criminal juror must be an intellectual vacuum, attached to a melting heart and perfectly macaronian bowels of compassion.

The secret source of humor is not joy but sorrow; there is no humor in Heaven.

Figures often beguile me, particularly when I have the arranging of them myself; in which case the remark attributed to Disraeli would often apply with justice and force: "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics."

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

Wagner’s music is better than it sounds.

I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did. I said I didn't know.

Humor is mankind's greatest blessing.

I am a great and sublime fool. But then I am God's fool, and all His works must be contemplated with respect.

Of all God's creatures, there is only one that cannot be made slave of the leash. That one is the cat. If man could be crossed with the cat it would improve the man, but it would deteriorate the cat.

If you don't read the newspaper, you're uninformed. If you read the newspaper, you're mis-informed.