Mark Twain Quotations

The secret of getting ahead is getting started

Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please.

Do the right thing. It will gratify some people and astonish the rest.

Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.

Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it.

Apparently there is nothing that cannot happen today.

A public library is the most enduring of memorials, the trustiest monument for the preservation of an event or a name or an affection; for it, and it only, is respected by wars and revolutions, and survives them.

The air up there in the clouds is very pure and fine, bracing and delicious. And why shouldn't it be?--it is the same the angels breathe.

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

Heaven goes by favor. If it went by merit, you would stay out and your dog would go in.

Sacred cows make the best hamburger.

When you fish for love, bait with your heart, not your brain.

If animals could speak, the dog would be a blundering outspoken fellow; but the cat would have the rare grace of never saying a word too much.

In the beginning of a change the patriot is a scarce man, and brave, and hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a patriot.

There was never yet an uninteresting life. Such a thing is an impossibility. Inside of the dullest exterior there is a drama, a comedy, and a tragedy.

A man's character may be learned from the adjectives which he habitually uses in conversation.

The dog is a gentleman; I hope to go to his heaven not man's.

Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear.

Never argue with stupid people, they will drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience.

Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see.

We need not worry so much about what man descends from; it's what he descends to that shames the human race.

It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.

Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company.

The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.

Part of the secret of a success in life is to eat what you like and let the food fight it out inside.

Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don't mind, it doesn't matter.

All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence, and then success is sure.

There are basically two types of people. People who accomplish things, and people who claim to have accomplished things. The first group is less crowded.

You can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.

If it's your job to eat a frog, it's best to do it first thing in the morning. And If it's your job to eat two frogs, it's best to eat the biggest one first.

The best way to cheer yourself up is to try to cheer somebody else up.

Thunder is good, thunder is impressive; but it is lightning that does the work.

Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't.

The lack of money is the root of all evil.

Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.

You can have brilliant ideas, but if you can't get them across, your ideas won't get you anywhere. Lee Iacocca Love is the irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired.

But who prays for Satan? Who, in eighteen centuries, has had the common humanity to pray for the one sinner that needed it most?

The human race has one really effective weapon, and that is laughter.

Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured.

Many a small thing has been made large by the right kind of advertising.

Loyalty to the country always. Loyalty to the government when it deserves it.

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

Let us not be too particular; it is better to have old secondhand diamonds than none at all.

If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything.

Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.

I am not an American. I am the American.

The human race is a race of cowards; and I am not only marching in that procession but carrying a banner.

What, sir, would the people of the earth be without woman? They would be scarce, sir, almighty scarce.

Facts are stubborn, but statistics are more pliable.

To refuse awards is another way of accepting them with more noise than is normal.

Suppose you were an idiot, and suppose you were a member of Congress; but I repeat myself.

Patriot: the person who can holler the loudest without knowing what he is hollering about.

In the first place, God made idiots. That was for practice. Then he made school boards.

Nothing so needs reforming as other people's habits.

He is now rising from affluence to poverty.

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

Wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been.

Thousands of geniuses live and die undiscovered - either by themselves or by others.

Never put off till tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow.

When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained.

It is just like man's vanity and impertinence to call an animal dumb because it is dumb to his dull perceptions.

Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do. Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.

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

It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare.

Sometimes too much to drink is barely enough.

Action speaks louder than words but not nearly as often.

The Christian's Bible is a drug store. Its contents remain the same, but the medical practice changes.

Lord save us all from old age and broken health and a hope tree that has lost the faculty of putting out blossoms.

Why is it that we rejoice at a birth and grieve at a funeral? It is because we are not the person involved.

It was wonderful to find America, but it would have been more wonderful to miss it.

Do the thing you fear most and the death of fear is certain.

The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them.

There is no sadder sight than a young pessimist.

No sinner is ever saved after the first twenty minutes of a sermon.

My books are like water; those of the great geniuses are wine. (Fortunately) everybody drinks water.

The public is the only critic whose opinion is worth anything at all.

My mother had a great deal of trouble with me, but I think she enjoyed it.

It is better to deserve honors and not have them than to have them and not deserve them.

A round man cannot be expected to fit in a square hole right away. He must have time to modify his shape.

I must have a prodigious quantity of mind; it takes me as much as a week sometimes to make it up.

I have been complimented many times and they always embarrass me; I always feel that they have not said enough.

Man will do many things to get himself loved, he will do all things to get himself envied.

The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.

A person who won't read has no advantage over one who can't read.

Under certain circumstances, urgent circumstances, desperate circumstances, profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer.

The very ink with which history is written is merely fluid prejudice.

It ain't those parts of the Bible that I can't understand that bother me, it is the parts that I do understand.

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

What is the difference between a taxidermist and a tax collector? The taxidermist takes only your skin.

The rule is perfect: in all matters of opinion our adversaries are insane.

I have never taken any exercise, except sleeping and resting, and I never intend to take any. Exercise is loathsome. And it cannot be any benefit when you are tired; and I was always tired.

Why shouldn't truth be stranger than fiction? Fiction, after all, has to make sense.

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

How lucky Adam was. He knew when he said a good thing, nobody had said it before.

It's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog.

When your friends begin to flatter you on how young you look, it's a sure sign you're getting old.

It's no wonder that truth is stranger than fiction. Fiction has to make sense.

The first of April is the day we remember what we are the other 364 days of the year.

Work is a necessary evil to be avoided.

The right word may be effective, but no word was ever as effective as a rightly timed pause.