Top 111 Mark Twain Quotes

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

Drag your thoughts away from your troubles… by the ears, by the heels, or any other way you can manage it.

The wit knows that his place is at the tail of a procession.

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

Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond; cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education.

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

A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Man is the only animal that blushes – or needs to.

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

Prophesy is a good line of business, but it is full of risks.

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

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

Soap and education are not as sudden as a massacre, but they are more deadly in the long run.

Life would be infinitely happier if we could only be born at the age of eighty and gradually approach eighteen.

I never smoke to excess – that is, I smoke in moderation, only one cigar at a time.

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

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

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

Against the assault of laughter, nothing can stand.

Few of us can stand prosperity. Another man’s, I mean.

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.

Substitute ‘damn‘ every time you’re inclined to write ‘very‘; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.

Do not tell fish stories where the people know you; but particularly, don’t tell them where they know the fish.

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

A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way.

All right, then, I’ll go to hell.

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

The Public is merely a multiplied ‘me.’

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

Apparently there is nothing that cannot happen today.

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

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

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

There are lies, damned lies and statistics.

There is no distinctly American criminal class – except Congress.

Education consists mainly of what we have unlearned.

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

If the world comes to an end, I want to be in Cincinnati. Everything comes there ten years later.

It is my belief that nearly any invented quotation, played with confidence, stands a good chance to deceive.

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

We Americans… bear the ark of liberties of the world.

There are people who can do all fine and heroic things but one – keep from telling their happiness to the unhappy.

Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt.

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

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

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

I came in with Halley’s Comet in 1835. It is coming again next year, and I expect to go out with it. It will be the greatest disappointment of my life if I don’t go out with Halley’s Comet. The Almighty has said, no doubt: ‘Now here are these two unaccountable freaks; they came in together, they must go out together.’

Loyalty to the Nation all the time, loyalty to the Government when it deserves it.

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

Honesty is the best policy – when there is money in it.

Martyrdom covers a multitude of sins.

As an example to others, and not that I care for moderation myself, it has always been my rule never to smoke when asleep, and never to refrain from smoking when awake.

Never pick a fight with people who buy ink by the barrel.

In the Spring, I have counted 136 different kinds of weather inside of 24 hours.

All generalizations are false, including this one.

Cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education.

When angry, count to four; when very angry, swear.

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

Water, taken in moderation, cannot hurt anybody.

When a person cannot deceive himself the chances are against his being able to deceive other people.

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

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

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

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

Better a broken promise than none at all.

He is now rising from affluence to poverty.

The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter – ‘tis the difference between the lightning-bug and the lightning.

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

Buy land, they’re not making it anymore.

I never let schooling interfere with my education.

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

Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn’t.

I was seldom able to see an opportunity until it had ceased to be one.

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

The more you explain it, the more I don’t understand it.

Don’t part with your illusions. When they are gone, you may still exist, but you have ceased to live.

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

Grief can take care if itself, but to get the full value of a joy you must have somebody to divide it with.

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

It is easier to stay out than get out.

Golf is a good walk spoiled.

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

Climate is what we expect, weather is what we get.

She was not quite what you would call refined. She was not quite what you would call unrefined. She was the kind of person that keeps a parrot.

It is better to take what does not belong to you than to let it lie around neglected.

Nothing so needs reforming as other people’s habits.

Giving up smoking is the easiest thing in the world. I know because I’ve done it thousands of times.

Only kings, presidents, editors, and people with tapeworms have the right to use the editorial ‘we.’

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

The more things are forbidden, the more popular they become.

If you hold a cat by the tail you learn things you cannot learn any other way.

Don’t let schooling interfere with your education.

One of the most striking differences between a cat and a lie is that a cat has only nine lives.

If man could be crossed with the cat it would improve man, but deteriorate the cat.

All emotion is involuntary when genuine.

Ideally a book would have no order to it, and the reader would have to discover his own.

The lack of money is the root of all evil.

Words are only painted fire; a look is the fire itself.

Good breeding consists in concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of the other person.

The secret of getting ahead is getting started.

Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts.

A person with a new idea is a crank until the idea succeeds.

In ‘Huckleberry Finn,’ I have drawn Tom Blankenship exactly as he was. He was ignorant, unwashed, insufficiently fed; but he had as good a heart as ever any boy had.

It were not best that we should all think alike; it is difference of opinion that makes horse races.