Topic: Reading
"A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read."
--Mark Twain
Topic: Conversation
"A good memory and a tongue tied in the middle is a combination which gives immortality to conversation."
--Mark Twain
"A human being has a natural desire to have more of a good thing than he needs."
--Mark Twain
"A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes."
--Mark Twain
"A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes."
--Mark Twain
"A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval."
--Mark Twain
Topic: Knowledge
"A man is accepted into a church for what he believes and he is turned out for what he knows."
--Mark Twain
"A man is never more truthful than when he acknowledges himself a liar."
--Mark Twain
Topic: Knowledge
"A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn by no other way."
--Mark Twain
"A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way."
--Mark Twain
"A person who won't read has no advantage over one who can't read."
--Mark Twain
"A person with a new idea is a crank until the idea succeeds."
--Mark Twain
"A round man cannot be expected to fit in a square hole right away. He must have time to modify his shape."
--Mark Twain
"Action speaks louder than words but not nearly as often"
--Mark Twain
"Adam was the only man who, when he said a good thing, knew that nobody had said it before him."
--Mark Twain
"Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand."
--Mark Twain
"Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don't mind, it doesn't matter."
--Mark Twain
"All generalizations are false, including this one."
--Mark Twain
"All say, "How hard it is that we have to die" - a strange complaint to come from the mouths of people who have had to live."
--Mark Twain
Topic: Death
"All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"--a strange complaint to come from the mouths of people who have had to live."
--Mark Twain
Topic: Man
"All that I care to know is that a man is a human being--that is enough for me; he can't be any worse."
--Mark Twain
Topic: Success
"All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence, and then Success is sure."
--Mark Twain
"All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence; then success is sure."
--Mark Twain
"All you need is ignorance and confidence and the success is sure."
--Mark Twain
"Always acknowledge a fault. This will throw those in authority off their guard and give you an opportunity to commit more."
--Mark Twain
"Always do right - this will gratify some and astonish the rest."
--Mark Twain
"Always do right- this will gratify some and astonish the rest."
--Mark Twain
"Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest."
--Mark Twain
Topic: Rights
"Always do right; this will gratify some people and astonish the rest."
--Mark Twain
"Always do the right thing. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest."
--Mark Twain
"An enemy can partly ruin a man, but it takes a good-natured injudicious friend to complete the thing and make it perfect."
--Mark Twain
"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."
--Mark Twain
"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."
--Mark Twain
"Apparently there is nothing that cannot happen today."
--Mark Twain
Topic: Impossibility
"Apparently there is nothing that cannot happen today. "
--Mark Twain
"Barring that natural expression of villainy which we all have, the man looked honest enough."
--Mark Twain
"Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint."
--Mark Twain
Topic: Dress
"Be careless in your dress if you must, but keep a tidy soul."
--Mark Twain
"Be careless in your dress if you will, but keep a tidy soul."
--Mark Twain
Topic: Loneliness
"Be good and you will be lonely."
--Mark Twain
"Better a broken promise than none at all."
--Mark Twain
Topic: Literature
"Biographies are but the clothes and buttons of a man -- the biography of the man himself cannot be written."
--Mark Twain
"Biographies are but the clothes and buttons of the man. The biography of the man himself cannot be written."
--Mark Twain
"But who prays for Satan? Who, in eighteen centuries, has had the common humanity to pray for the one sinner that needed it most?"
--Mark Twain
"By trying we can easily endure adversity. Another man's, I mean."
--Mark Twain
"By trying we can easily learn to endure adversity. Another man's, I mean."
--Mark Twain
"Cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education."
--Mark Twain
Topic: Civilization
"Civilization is a limitless multiplication of unnecessary necessities."
--Mark Twain
"Civilization is the limitless multiplication of unnecessary necessities."
--Mark Twain
"Climate is what we expect, weather is what we get."
--Mark Twain
"Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society."
--Mark Twain
"Courage is not the lack of fear. It is acting in spite of it."
--Mark Twain
"Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear - not absence of fear."
--Mark Twain
"Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear."
--Mark Twain
Topic: Courage
"Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear--not absence of fear."
--Mark Twain
"Dance like no one is watching. Sing like no one is listening. Love like you've never been hurt and live like it's heaven on Earth."
--Mark Twain
"Deep down in me I knowed it was a lie, and He knowed it. You can't pray a lie - I found that out."
--Mark Twain
"Denial ain't just a river in Egypt."
--Mark Twain
"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."
--Mark Twain
"Do something everyday that you don't want to do; this is the golden rule for acquiring the habit of doing your duty without pain."
--Mark Twain
"Do the right thing. It will gratify some people and astonish the rest."
--Mark Twain
"Do the thing you fear most and the death of fear is certain."
--Mark Twain
"Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first."
--Mark Twain
"Don't let schooling interfere with your education."
--Mark Twain
"Don't part with your illusions. When they are gone you may still exist, but you have ceased to live."
--Mark Twain
Topic: Illusion
"Don't part with your illusions. When they are gone you may still exist, but you have ceased to live. "
--Mark Twain
"Don't part with your illusions. When they are gone, you may still exist, but you have ceased to live."
--Mark Twain
"Don't say the old lady screamed. Bring her on and let her scream."
--Mark Twain
"Don't tell fish stories where the people know you; but particularly, don't tell them where they know the fish."
--Mark Twain
"'Don't you worry, and don't you hurry.' I know that phrase by heart, and if all other music should perish out of the world it would still sing to me."
--Mark Twain
"Drag your thoughts away from your troubles... by the ears, by the heels, or any other way you can manage it."
--Mark Twain
"Duties are not performed for duty's sake, but because their neglect would make the man uncomfortable. A man performs but one duty - the duty of contenting his spirit, the duty of making himself agreeable to himself."
--Mark Twain
"Each man must for himself alone decide what is right and what is wrong, which course is patriotic and which isn't. You cannot shirk this and be a man. To decide against your conviction is to be an unqualified and excusable traitor, both to yourself and to your country, let me label you as they may."
--Mark Twain
"Education consists mainly of what we have unlearned."
--Mark Twain
Topic: Rest
"Eternal rest sounds comforting in the pulpit; well, you try it once, and see how heavy time will hang on your hands."
--Mark Twain
"Etiquette requires us to admire the human race."
--Mark Twain
Topic: Personality
"Everyone is a moon, and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody."
--Mark Twain
"Everything has its limit - iron ore cannot be educated into gold."
--Mark Twain
"Everything human is pathetic. The secret source of humor itself is not joy but sorrow. There is no humor in heaven."
--Mark Twain
"Facts are stubborn, but statistics are more pliable."
--Mark Twain
"Familiarity breeds contempt - and children."
--Mark Twain
"Familiarity breeds contempt. How accurate that is. The reason we hold truth in such respect is because we have so little opportunity to get familiar with it."
--Mark Twain
Topic: Familiarity
"Familiarity breeds contempt--and children."
--Mark Twain
"Few things are harder to put up with than a good example."
--Mark Twain
"Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example."
--Mark Twain
"Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn't."
--Mark Twain
"First, God created idiots. That was just for practice. Then He created school boards."
--Mark Twain
"Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heal that has crushed it."
--Mark Twain
Topic: Fortune
"Fortune knocks at every man's door once in a life, but in a good many cases the man is in a neighboring saloon and does not hear her."
--Mark Twain
"From his cradle to his grave a man never does a single thing which has any first and foremost object but one - to secure peace of mind, spiritual comfort, for himself."
--Mark Twain
"George Washington, as a boy, was ignorant of the commonest accomplishments of youth. He could not even lie."
--Mark Twain
Topic: Facts
"Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please."
--Mark Twain
"Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please."
--Mark Twain
"Giving up smoking is the easiest thing in the world. I know because I've done it thousands of times."
--Mark Twain
"Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company."
--Mark Twain
"God made the Idiot for practice, and then He made the School Board."
--Mark Twain
"Going to law is losing a cow for the sake of a cat."
--Mark Twain
Topic: Golf
"Golf is a good walk spoiled."
--Mark Twain
"Good breeding consists in concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of the other person."
--Mark Twain
"Good breeding consists of concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of the other person."
--Mark Twain
"Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life."
--Mark Twain
"Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this it the ideal life."
--Mark Twain
Topic: Happiness
"Good friends, good books, and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life."
--Mark Twain
"Grief can take care if itself, but to get the full value of a joy you must have somebody to divide it with."
--Mark Twain
"Grief can take care of itself, but to get the full value of a joy you must have somebody to divide it with."
--Mark Twain
Topic: Joy
"Grief can take care of itself, but to get the full value of joy you must have somebody to divide it with."
--Mark Twain
Topic: Habit
"Habit is habit and not to be flung out of the window by any man, but coaxed downstairs a step at a time."
--Mark Twain
"Happiness is a Swedish sunset; it is there for all, but most of us look the other way and lose it."
--Mark Twain
Topic: Custom
"Have a place for everything and keep the thing somewhere else; this is not advice, it is merely custom."
--Mark Twain
"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."
--Mark Twain
"He is now rising from affluence to poverty."
--Mark Twain
"He is useless on top of the ground; he ought to be under it, inspiring the cabbages."
--Mark Twain
Topic: Heaven
"Heaven goes by favor; if it went by merit, you would stay out and your dog would go in."
--Mark Twain
"Heaven goes by favour. If it went by merit, you would stay out and your dog would go in."
--Mark Twain
"Heaven is by favor; if it were by merit your dog would go in and you would stay out. Of all the creatures ever made man is the most detestable. Of the entire brood, he is the only one that possesses malice. He is the only creature that inflicts pain for sport, knowing it to be pain."
--Mark Twain
Topic: History
"History teaches us that whenever a weak and ignorant people possess a thing which a strong and enlightened people want, it must be yielded up peaceably."
--Mark Twain
"Honesty is the best policy - when there is money in it."
--Mark Twain
Topic: Honesty
"Honesty is the best policy--when there is money in it."
--Mark Twain
"How little a thing can make us happy when we feel that we have earned it."
--Mark Twain
"Humor is mankind's greatest blessing."
--Mark Twain
"Humor is the great thing, the saving thing. The minute it crops up, all our irritation and resentments slip away, and a sunny spirit takes their place."
--Mark Twain
"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."
--Mark Twain
"I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened."
--Mark Twain
"I am different from Washington. I have a higher, grander standard of principle. Washington could not lie. I can lie, but I won't."
--Mark Twain
"I am not interested to know whether vivisection produces results that are profitable to the human race or doesn't... The pain which it inflicts upon unconsenting animals is the basis of my enmity toward it, and it is to me sufficient justification of the enmity without looking further."
--Mark Twain
"I am not one of those who in expressing opinions confine themselves to facts."
--Mark Twain
"I am opposed to millionaires, but it would be dangerous to offer me the position."
--Mark Twain
Topic: Praise
"I can live for two months on a good compliment."
--Mark Twain
"I can teach anybody how to get what they want out of life. The problem is that I can't find anybody who can tell me what they want."
--Mark Twain
"I cannot call to mind a single instance where I have ever been irreverent, except toward the things which were sacred to other people."
--Mark Twain
Topic: Law
"I can't do literary work for the rest of this year because I'm meditating another lawsuit and looking around for a defendant."
--Mark Twain
Topic: Soldier
"I could have become a soldier if I had waited; I knew more about retreating than the man who invented retreating."
--Mark Twain
"I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it."
--Mark Twain
"I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying that I approved of it."
--Mark Twain
"I didn't have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead."
--Mark Twain
Topic: Work
"I do not like work even when someone else does it."
--Mark Twain
Topic: Prayer
"I don't know of a single foreign product that enters this country untaxed, except the answer to prayer."
--Mark Twain
"I don't like to commit myself about heaven and hell - you see, I have friends in both places."
--Mark Twain
Topic: Heaven
"I don't like to commit myself about heaven and hell--you see, I have friends in both places."
--Mark Twain
Topic: Mind
"I have a prodigious quantity of mind; it takes me as much as a week sometimes to make it up."
--Mark Twain
"I have been complimented many times and they always embarrass me; I always feel that they have not said enough."
--Mark Twain
Topic: Compliment
"I have been complimented many times and they always embarrass me; I alwaysfeel that they have not said enough."
--Mark Twain
"I have been studying the traits and dispositions of the "lower animals" (so called) and contrasting them with the traits and dispositions of man. I find the result humiliating to me."
--Mark Twain
"I have found out that there ain't no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than to travel with them."
--Mark Twain
"I have made it a rule never to smoke more that one cigar at a time."
--Mark Twain
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education"
--Mark Twain
Topic: Education
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education."
--Mark Twain
"I have never taken any exercise except sleeping and resting."
--Mark Twain
"I have no color prejudices nor caste prejudices nor creed prejudices. All I care to know is that a man is a human being, and that is enough for me; he can't be any worse."
--Mark Twain
"I make it a rule never to smoke while I'm sleeping."
--Mark Twain
"I must have a prodigious quantity of mind; it takes me as much as a week sometimes to make it up."
--Mark Twain
Topic: Education
"I never let schooling interfere with my education."
--Mark Twain
"I once sent a dozen of my friends a telegram saying 'flee at once - all is discovered.' They all left town immediately."
--Mark Twain
"I think a compliment ought to always precede a complaint, where one is possible, because it softens resentment and insures for the complaint a courteous and gentle reception."
--Mark Twain
"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."
--Mark Twain
"I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did. I said I didn't know."
--Mark Twain
"I was gratified to be able to answer promptly. I said I don't know."
--Mark Twain
Topic: Ignorance
"I would rather have my ignorance than another man's knowledge, because I have so much of it."
--Mark Twain
"Ideally a book would have no order to it, and the reader would have to discover his own."
--Mark Twain
"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."
--Mark Twain
"If man could be crossed with the cat, it would improve man but deteriorate the cat."
--Mark Twain
"If to be interesting is to be uncommonplace, it is becoming a question, with me, if there are any commonplace people."
--Mark Twain
Topic: Compliment
"If you can't get a compliment any other way, pay yourself one."
--Mark Twain
Topic: Weather
"If you don't like the weather in New England, just wait a few minutes."
--Mark Twain
"If you hold a cat by the tail you learn things you cannot learn any other way."
--Mark Twain
"If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. That is the difference between dog and man."
--Mark Twain
Topic: Gratitude
"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."
--Mark Twain
"If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you; that is the principal difference between a dog and a man"
--Mark Twain
"If you tell the truth you don't have to remember anything"
--Mark Twain
Topic: Truth
"If you tell the truth you don't have to remember anything."
--Mark Twain
Topic: Truth
"If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything."
--Mark Twain
"Ignorant people think it is the noise which fighting cats make that is so aggravating, but it ain't so; it is the sickening grammar that they use."
--Mark Twain
"In a museum in Havana there are two skulls of Christopher Columbus, ?one when he was a boy and one when he was a man.?"
--Mark Twain
"In Boston they ask, how much does he know? In New York, how much is he worth? In Philadelphia, who were his parents?"
--Mark Twain
"In certain trying circumstances, urgent circumstances, desperate circumstances, profanity furnishes a relief denied even to prayer."
--Mark Twain
"In India, "cold weather" is merely a conventional phrase and has come into use through the necessity of having some way to distinguish between weather which will melt a brass door-knob and weather which will only make it mushy."
--Mark Twain
Topic: Travel
"In Paris they simply stared when I spoke to them in Fench; I never did succeed in making those idiots understand their own language."
--Mark Twain
"In Paris they simply stared when I spoke to them in French; I never did succeed in making those idiots understand their language."
--Mark Twain
"In religion and politics, people's beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second hand, and without examination."
--Mark Twain
"In statesmanship get the formalities right, never mind about the moralities."
--Mark Twain
"In the first place, God made idiots. That was for practice. Then he made school boards."
--Mark Twain
"In the real world, nothing happens at the right place at the right time. It is the job of journalists and historians to correct that."
--Mark Twain
"In the Spring, I have counted 136 different kinds of weather inside of 24 hours."
--Mark Twain
"India has 2,000,000 gods, and worships them all. In religion, other countries are paupers; India is the only millionaire."
--Mark Twain
"It ain't those parts of the Bible that I can't understand that bother me, it is the parts that I do understand."
--Mark Twain
"It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so."
--Mark Twain
"It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly American criminal class except Congress."
--Mark Twain
"It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native criminal class except Congress."
--Mark Twain
Topic: Manners
"It is a mistake that there is no bath that will cure people's manners, but drowning would help."
--Mark Twain
Topic: Youth
"It is better to be a young June-bug than an old bird of paradise."
--Mark Twain
Topic: Honor
"It is better to deserve honors and not have them than to have them and not deserve them."
--Mark Twain
"It is better to deserve honors and not have them than to have them and not to deserve them."
--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."
--Mark Twain
"It is better to take what does not belong to you than to let it lie around neglected."
--Mark Twain
"It is by the fortune of God that, in this country, we have three benefits: freedom of speech, freedom of thought, and the wisdom never to use either."
--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."
--Mark Twain
Topic: Prudence
"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."
--Mark Twain
"It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare."
--Mark Twain
Topic: Emotion
"It is easier to manufacture seven facts out of whole cloth than one emotion."
--Mark Twain
Topic: Temptation
"It is easier to stay out than get out."
--Mark Twain
"It is hopeless for the occasional visitor to try to keep up with Chicago-she outgrows his prophecies faster than he can make them. She is always a novelty; for she is never the Chicago you saw when you passed through the last time."
--Mark Twain
"It is just like man's vanity and impertinence to call an animal dumb because it is dumb to his dull perceptions."
--Mark Twain
"It is not best that we should all think alike; it is a difference of opinion that makes horse races."
--Mark Twain
Topic: Opinion
"It is the difference of opinion that makes horse races."
--Mark Twain
Topic: Injury
"It takes your enemy and your friend, working together to hurt you to the heart; the one to slander you and the other to get the news to you."
--Mark Twain
"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."
--Mark Twain
"It used to take me all vacation to grow a new hide in place of the one they flogged off me during school term."
--Mark Twain
"It usually takes me more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech."
--Mark Twain
Topic: Speech
"It usually takes more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech."
--Mark Twain
"It was enough to make a body ashamed of the human race."
--Mark Twain
"It was wonderful to find America, but it would have been more wonderful to miss it."
--Mark Twain
"It's good sportsmanship to not pick up lost golf balls while they are still rolling."
--Mark Twain
"It's no wonder that truth is stranger than fiction. Fiction has to make sense."
--Mark Twain
"It's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog."
--Mark Twain
"I've lived a long life and seen a lot of hard times...most of which never happened."
--Mark Twain
"I've never let my school interfere with my education."
--Mark Twain
"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."
--Mark Twain
"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."
--Mark Twain
"Keep away from those who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you believe that you too can become great."
--Mark Twain
"Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see."
--Mark Twain
Topic: King
"Kings is mostly rapscallions."
--Mark Twain
"Last week I stated that this woman was the ugliest woman I had ever seen. I have since been visited by her sister and now wish to withdraw that statement."
--Mark Twain
"Laws are sand, customs are rock. Laws can be evaded and punishment escaped but an openly transgressed custom brings sure punishment."
--Mark Twain
"Laws control the lesser man... Right conduct controls the greater one."
--Mark Twain
Topic: Superstition
"Let me make the superstitions of a nation and I care not who makes its laws or its songs either."
--Mark Twain
"Let us be thankful for the fools. But for them the rest of us could not succeed."
--Mark Twain
Topic: Flattery
"Let us be thankful for the fools; but for them the rest of us could not succeed."
--Mark Twain
"Let us live so that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry."
--Mark Twain
"Let us not be too particular; it is better to have old secondhand diamonds than none at all.""
--Mark Twain
Topic: Life
"Let us so live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry."
--Mark Twain
"Life does not consist mainly, or even largely, of facts and happenings. It consists mainly of the storm of thought that is forever flowing through one's head"
--Mark Twain
"Life should begin with age and its privileges and accumulations, and end with youth and its capacity to splendidly enjoy such advantages."
--Mark Twain
Topic: Life
"Life would be infinitely happier if we could only be born at the age of eighty and gradually approach eighteen."
--Mark Twain
"Lord save us all from a hope tree that has lost the faculty of putting out blossoms."
--Mark Twain
"Love seems the swiftest, but it is the slowest of all growths. No man or woman really knows what perfect love is until they have been married a quarter of a century."
--Mark Twain
"Loyalty to petrified opinion never broke a chain or freed a human soul."
--Mark Twain
"Loyalty to petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul."
--Mark Twain
"Man - a creature made at the end of the week's work when God was tired."
--Mark Twain
"Man is the only animal that blushes - or needs to."
--Mark Twain
Topic: Blush
"Man is the only animal that blushes. Or needs to."
--Mark Twain
Topic: Creativity
"Man was made at the end of the week's work when God was tired."
--Mark Twain
"Man will do many things to get himself loved, he will do all things to get himself envied."
--Mark Twain
"Many a small thing has been made large by the right kind of advertising."
--Mark Twain
"Martyrdom covers a multitude of sins."
--Mark Twain
Topic: Modesty
"Modesty antedates clothes and will be resumed when clothes are no more. Modesty died when clothes were born. Modesty died when false modesty was born."
--Mark Twain
"Morals are an acquirement - like music, like a foreign language, like piety, poker, paralysis - no man is born with them."
--Mark Twain
Topic: Bible
"Most people are bothered by those passages of Scripture they do not understand, but the passages that bother me are those I do understand."
--Mark Twain
Topic: Truth
"Most writers regard truth as their most valuable possession, and therefore are most economical in its use."
--Mark Twain
Topic: Books
"My books are water; those of the great geniuses are wine--everybody drinks water."
--Mark Twain
Topic: Country
"My kind of loyalty was loyalty to one's country, not to its institutions or its officeholders. The country is the real thing, the substantial thing, the eternal thing; it is the thing to watch over, and care for, and be loyal to institutions are extraneous, they are its mere clothing, and clothing can wear out, become ragged, cease to be comfortable, cease to protect the body from winter, disease, and death."
--Mark Twain
"My mother had a great deal of trouble with me, but I think she enjoyed it."
--Mark Twain
"Name the greatest of all inventors. Accident."
--Mark Twain
"Names are not always what they seem. The common Welsh name BZJXXLLWCP is pronounced Jackson."
--Mark Twain
"Nature knows no indecencies; man invents them."
--Mark Twain
"Necessity is the mother of taking chances."
--Mark Twain
"Never put off till tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow."
--Mark Twain
"Never put off until tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow."
--Mark Twain
Topic: Truth
"Never tell the truth to people who are not worthy of it."
--Mark Twain
"No sinner is ever saved after the first twenty minutes of a sermon."
--Mark Twain
"Noise proves nothing. Often a hen who has merely laid an egg cackles as if she has laid an asteroid."
--Mark Twain
"Noise proves nothing. Often a hen who has merely laid an egg cackles as if she laid an asteroid."
--Mark Twain
"Not until you become a stranger to yourself will you be able to make acquaintance with the Friend."
--Mark Twain
Topic: Reform
"Nothing so needs reforming as other people's habits."
--Mark Twain
"October. This is one of the peculiarly dangerous months to speculate in stocks in. The others are July, January, September, April, November, May, March, June, December, August, and February."
--Mark Twain
"Often it does seem a pity that Noah and his party did not miss the boat."
--Mark Twain
"Once you've put one of his [Henry James] books down, you simply can't pick it up again."
--Mark Twain
"One of the most striking differences between a cat and a lie is that a cat has only nine lives."
--Mark Twain
Topic: Soul
"One of the proofs of the immortality of the soul is that myriads have believed it--they also believed the world was flat."
--Mark Twain
"One of the striking differences between a cat and a lie is that a cat has only nine lives."
--Mark Twain
"Only a government that is rich and safe can afford to be a democracy, for democracy is the most expensive and nefarious kind of government ever heard of on earth."
--Mark Twain
"Only kings, presidents, editors, and people with tapeworms have the right to use the editorial "we.""
--Mark Twain
"Only one thing is impossible for God: To find any sense in any copyright law on the planet."
--Mark Twain
"Our opinions do not really blossom into fruition until we have expressed them to someone else."
--Mark Twain
"Part of the secret of a success in life is to eat what you like and let the food fight it out inside."
--Mark Twain
"Part of the secret of success in life is to eat what you like and let the food fight it out inside."
--Mark Twain
"Patriot: the person who can holler the loudest without knowing what he is hollering about."
--Mark Twain
"Patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels."
--Mark Twain
"Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot. By Order of the Author"
--Mark Twain
Topic: Belief
"Principles have no real force except when one is well-fed."
--Mark Twain
"Prophesy is a good line of business, but it is full of risks."
--Mark Twain
Topic: Prosperity
"Prosperity is the surest breeder of insolence I know."
--Mark Twain
"Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself."
--Mark Twain
