Mark Twain Quotes

In all the ages, three-fourths of the support of the great charities has been conscience money.

I have no liking for novels or stories - none in the world; and so, whenever I read one - which is not oftener than once in two years, and even in these same cases I seldom read beyond the middle of the book - my distaste for the vehicle always taints my judgment of the literature itself, as a matter of course; and also of course makes my verdict valuless. Are you saying "You have written stories yourself." Quite true: but the fact that an Indian likes to scalp people is no evidence that he likes to be scalped.

Virtue has never been as respectable as money.

The billiard table is better than the doctor.

All the territorial possessions of all the political establishments in the earth
including America, of course
consist of pilferings from other people's wash. No tribe, howsoever insignificant, and no nation, howsoever mighty occupies a foot of land that was not stolen.

What got you into trouble?" says the baldhead to t'other chap.
"Well, I'd been selling an article to take the tartar off the teeth - and it does take it off, too, and generly the enamel along with it -

It gratified all the vicious vanity that was in him;

There is nothing more awe-inspiring than a miracle except the credulity that can take it at par.

The unexamined life may not be worth living, but the life too closely examined may not be lived at all.

A "classic" is a book that everybody praises but nobody has read

If the writer doesn't sweat, the reader will.

If all the fools in this world should die, lordly God how lonely I should be.

I felt so lonesome I most wished I was dead. The stars were shining, and the leaves rustled in the woods ever so mournful; and I heard an owl, away off, who-whooing about somebody that was dead, and a whippowill and a dog crying about somebody that was going to die;

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

Do not bring your dog. (advice for attending a funeral)

Every man is wholly honest to himself and to God, but not to any one else.

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

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.

But I have never ceased to think of that girl. I have written to her, but I can not direct the epistle because her name is one of those nine-jointed Russian affairs, and there are not letters enough in our alphabet to hold out. I am not reckless enough to try to pronounce it when I am awake, but I make a stagger at it in my dreams,

I have only one moral precept; never smoke more than five cigars at a time.

The very next morning at daylight such parties are sure to be found lying up some back alley, contentedly waiting for the hearse.

Some civilized women would lose half their charm without dress and some would lose all of it.

Work and play are words used to describe the same thing under differing conditions.

Deep down in me I knowed it was a lie, and He knowed it. You can't pray a lie - I found that out.

Conservatism is the blind and fear-filled worship of dead radicals.

Labor in loneliness is irksome.

Every man is in his own person the whole human race without a detail lacking ... I knew I should not find in any philosophy a single thought which had not passed through my own head, nor a single thought which had not passed through the heads of millions and millions of men before I was born.

Write without pay until someone offers pay. If nobody offers within three years, the candidate may look upon this as a sign that sawing wood is what he was intended for.

Preachers are always pleasant company when they are off duty.

I'm pushing 60 years of age ... and that's enough exercise for me.

To be a patriot, one had to say, and keep on saying, "Our Country, right or wrong," and urge on the little war. Have you not perceived that that phrase is an insult to the nation?

The law is a system that protects everybody who can afford to hire a good lawyer.

Tom said to himself that it was not such a hollow world, after all. 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 attain. If he had been a great and wise philosopher, like the writer of this book, he would now have comprehended that Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do, and that Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do. And this would help him to understand why constructing artificial flowers or performing on a tread-mill is work, while rolling ten-pins or climbing Mont Blanc is only amusement. There are wealthy gentlemen in England who drive four-horse passenger-coaches twenty or thirty miles on a daily line, in the summer, because the privilege costs them considerable money; but if they were offered wages for the service, that would turn it into work and then they would resign.

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

He listened some more; then he come tiptoeing down and stood right between us; we could a touched him, nearly. Well, likely it was minutes and minutes that there warn't a sound, and we all there so close together. There was a place on my ankle that got to itching, but I dasn't scratch it; and then my ear begun to itch; and next my back, right between my shoulders. Seemed like I'd die if I couldn't scratch. Well, I've noticed that thing plenty times since. If you are with the quality, or at a funeral, or trying to go to sleep when you ain't sleepy - if you are anywheres where it won't do for you to scratch, why you will itch all over in upwards of a thousand places. Pretty soon Jim says:

A Russian imbues his polite things with a heartiness, both of phrase and expression, that compels belief in their sincerity.

There is nothing in the world like persuasive speech to fuddle the mental apparatus.

It was in 1590
winter. Austria was far away from the world, and asleep; it was still the Middle Ages in Austria, and promised to remain so forever. Some even set it away back centuries upon centuries and said that by the mental and spiritual clock it was still the Age of Belief in Austria. But they meant it as a compliment, not a slur, and it was so taken, and we were all proud of it. I remember it well, although I was only a boy; and I remember, too, the pleasure it gave me.
Yes, Austria was far from the world, and asleep, and our village was in the middle of that sleep, being in the middle of Austria.

Hang the boy, can't I never learn anything? Ain't he played tricks on me enough like that for me to be looking out for him by this time? But old fools is the biggest fools there is. Can;t learn an old dog new tricks, as the saying is. But my goodness, he never plays them alike, two days, and how is a body to know what's coming? He 'pears to know just how long he can torment me before I get my dander up and he knows if he can make out to put me off for a minute or make me laugh, it's all down again and I can't hit him a lick. I ain't doing my duty by that boy, and that's the Lord's truth, goodness knows. Spare the rod and spile the child, as the Good Book says. I'm a-laying up sin and suffering for the both of us, I know. He's full of the Old Scratch, but laws-a-me! he's my own dead sister's boy, poor thing, and I ain't got the heart to lash him, somehow. Every time I let him off, my conscience does hurt me so, and every time I hit him my old heart almost breaks. Well-a-well, man that is born of woman is of few days and full of trouble, as the Scripture says, and I reckon it's so. He'll play hooky this evening, and I'll just be obleeged to make him work tomorrow, to punish him. It's mighty hard to make him work Saturdays, when all the boys is having holiday, but he hates work more than he hates anything else, and I've got to do some of my duty by him, or I'll be the ruination of the child.

You may call a jay a bird. Well, so he is, in a measure
because he's got feathers on him, and don't belong to no church, perhaps;but otherwise he is just as much a human as you be. And I'll tell you for why. A jay's gifts and instincts, and feelings, and interests, cover the whole ground. A jay hasn't got any more principle than a Congressman.

You can never find a Christian who has acquired this valuable knowledge, this saving knowledge, by any process but the everlasting and all-sufficient 'people say.'

We regret the things we don't do more than the things we do.

Every man is born to one possession which out values all his others - his last breath.

Looking into the muzzle of Slade's pistol. "And the next instant," added my informant, impressively, "he was one of the deadest men that ever lived.

One must keep one's character. Earn a character first if you can, and if you can't, then assume one.

Never learn to do anything: if you don't learn, you'll always find someone else to do it for you.

Let us save the tomorrows for work.

It is not what a man knows, but what he thinks of in time.

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

Yet little Tom was not unhappy. He had a hard time of it but did not know it. It was the sort of time that all the Offal Court boys had; therefore he supposed it was the correct and comfortable thing.

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 men label you as they may.

One lives to find out.

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

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

If you should rear a duck in the heart of the Sahara, no doubt it would swim if you brought it to the Nile.

Naturally the question suggests itself, Why did these people want the river now when nobody had wanted it in the five preceding generations? Apparently it was because at this late day they thought they had discovered a way to make it useful; for it had come to be believed that the Mississippi emptied into the Gulf of California, and therefore afforded a short cut from Canada to China. Previously the supposition had been that it emptied into the Atlantic, or Sea of Virginia.

If you send a damned fool to St. Louis, and you don't tell them he's a damned fool, they'll never find out.

There was no crime in unconscious plagiarism; that I committed it everyday, that he committed it everyday, that every man alive on earth who writes or speaks commits it every day and not merely once or twice but every time he open his mouth ... there is nothing of our own in it except some slight change born of our temperament, character, environment, teachings and associations

I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time.

I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them have never happened.

There are those who would misteach us that to stick in a rut is consistency - and a virtue, and that to climb out of the rut is inconsistency - and a vice.

Creed and opinion change with time, and their symbols perish; but Literature and its temples are sacred to all creeds and inviolate.

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

My heart fell down amongst my lungs and livers and things, and a hard piece of corn-crust started down my throat after it and got met on the road with a cough and was shot across the table and took one of the children in the eye and curled him up like a fishing-worm, and let a cry out of him the size of a war-whoop, and Tom he turned kinder blue around the gills, and it all amounted to a considerable state of things for about a quarter of a minute or as much as that, and I would a sold out for half price if there was a bidder.

Yes," I said, "that is what I mean to say. I am not going to vote for him." The others began to find their voices. They sang the same note. They said that when a party's representatives choose a man, that ends it. If they choose unwisely it is a misfortune, but no loyal member of the party has any right to withhold his vote. He has a plain duty before him and he can't shirk it. He must vote for that nominee. I said that no party held the privilege of dictating to me how I should vote. That if party loyalty was a form of patriotism, I was no patriot, and that I didn't think I was much of a patriot anyway, for oftener than otherwise what the general body of Americans regarded as the patriotic course was not in accordance with my views; that if there was any valuable difference between being an American and a monarchist it lay in the theory that the American could decide for himself what is patriotic and what isn't; whereas

The history of our race, and each individual's experience, are sown thick with evidence that a truth is not hard to kill and that a lie told well is immortal.

I'm all for prosperity. It's change I object to.

Evidence ... proves that prohibition only drives drunkenness behind closed doors and into dark places, and it does not cure it or even diminish it.

I have a prejudice against people who print things in a foreign language and add no translation. When I am the reader, and the author considers me able to do the translating myself, he pays me quite a nice compliment - but if he would do the translating for me I would try to get along without the compliment.

If you are with the quality, or at a funeral, or trying to go to sleep when you ain't sleepy - if you are anywheres where it won't do for you to scratch, why you will itch all over in upwards of a thousand places.

When its steamboat time
you steamboat

We have an insanity plea that would have saved Cain.

Get a bicycle. You will not regret it, if you live.

Here the narrator bursts into explosion after explosion of thunderous horse-laughter, repeating that nub from time to time through his gaspings and shriekings and suffocatings.

Ignorance is not, not knowing something. It is knowing what isn't so.

Often it does seem such a pity that Noah and his party did not miss the boat.

Definite speech means clarity of mind.

God made the Sea of Galilee and its surroundings as they are. Is it the province of Mr. Grimes to improve upon the work?

Health is a habit, and not to be flung out of the window by any man, but coaxed downstairs a step at a time.

A group of men in evening clothes looks like a flock of crows, and is just about as inspiring.

Let us draw the curtain of charity over the rest of this scene

Because if he was sick he would pull his clothes off SOME time or other - don't you reckon he would?

I could see he meant no offense, but in my thoughts I set it down as not very good manners.
"Manners!" he said. "Why, it is merely the truth, and truth is good manners; manners are a fiction.

Pretty soon I wanted to smoke, and asked the widow to let me. But she wouldn't. She said it was a mean practice and wasn't clean, and I must try to not do it any more. That is just the way with some people. They get down on a thing when they don't know nothing about it. Here she was a-bothering about Moses, which was no kin to her, and no use to anybody, being gone, you see, yet finding a power of fault with me for doing a thing that had some good in it. And she took snuff, too; of course that was all right, because she done it herself.

The priest explained the mysteries of the faith 'by signs,' for the saving of the savages; thus compensating them with possible possessions in Heaven for the certain ones on earth which they had just been robbed of. And also, by signs, La Salle drew from these simple children of the forest acknowledgments of fealty to Louis the Putrid, over the water. Nobody smiled at these colossal ironies.

These coins are not very valuable. Jack went out to get a napoleon changed, so as to have money suited to the general cheapness of things, and came back and said he had "swamped the bank, had bought eleven quarts of coin, and the head of the firm had gone on the street to negotiate for the balance of the change." I bought nearly half a pint of their money for a shilling myself. I am not proud on account of having so much money, though. I care nothing for wealth.

The human being places sexual intercourse above all other joys, but leaves it out of his heaven.

The first time a student realizes that a little learning is a dangerous thing is when he brings home a poor report card.

These descriptions do really state the truth- as nearly as the limitations of language will allow. But language is a treacherous thing, a most unsure vehicle, and it can seldom arrange descriptive words in such a way that they will not inflate the facts-by help of the readers imagination, which is always ready to take a hand, and work for nothing, and do the bulk of it at that.

Whenever he was out of luck and a little down-hearted, he would fall to mourning over the loss of a wonderful cat he used to own (for where women and children are not, men of kindly impulses take up with pets, for they must love something)

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?

Helen Keller was to have been present last night but she is ill in bed, and has been ill in bed during several weeks, through overwork in the interest of the blind, the deaf, and the dumb. I need not go into any particulars about Helen Keller. She is fellow to Caesar, Alexander, Napoleon, Homer, Shakspeare, and the rest of the immortals. She will be as famous a thousand years from now as she is to-day.

Secondly, these missionaries would gradually, and without creating suspicion or exciting alarm, introduce a rudimentary cleanliness among the nobility, and from them it would work down to the people, if the priests could be kept quiet. This would undermine the Church. I mean would be a step toward that. Next, education - next, freedom - and then she would begin to crumble. It being my conviction that any Established Church is an established crime, an established slave-pen, I had no scruples, but was willing to assail it in any way or with any weapon that promised to hurt it. Why, in my own former day - in remote centuries not yet stirring in the womb of time - there were old Englishmen who imagined that they had been born in a free country: a "free" country with the Corporation Act and the Test still in force in it - timbers propped against men's liberties and dishonored consciences to shore up an Established Anachronism with.

The New York papers have long known that no large question is ever really settled until I have been consulted.

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-

First get the facts, you can distort them later

Additional problems are the offspring of poor solutions.

The very "marks" on the bottom of a piece of rare crockery are able to throw me into a gibbering ecstasy.

There is nothing in the world like a persuasive speech to fuddle the mental apparatus and upset the convictions and debauch the emotions of an audience not practiced in the tricks and delusions of oratory.

None but the dead have free speech.