Alphabetized Mark Twain Quotes

It may have happened, it may not have happened but it could have happened. ~ Mark Twain

We have to be despised by somebody whom we regard as above us, or we are not happy; we have to have somebody to worship and envy,or we cannot be content. In America we manifest this in all the ancient and customary ways. In public we scoff at titles and hereditary privilege, but privately we hanker after them, and when we get a chance we buy them for cash and a daughter. ~ Mark Twain

You want to be very careful about lying; otherwise you are nearly sure to get caught. ~ Mark Twain

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

he strode down the street with his mouth full of harmony and his soul full of gratitude. He ~ Mark Twain

And always we had wars, and more wars, and still other wars
all over Europe, all over the world. "Sometimes in the private interest of royal families," Satan said, "sometimes to crush a weak nation; but never a war started by the aggressor for any clean purpose
there is no such war in the history of the race. ~ Mark Twain

Tom Sawyer the Pirate looked around upon the envying juveniles about him and confessed in his heart that this was the proudest moment of his life. ~ Mark Twain

A solemn, unsmiling, sanctimonious old iceberg who looked like he was waiting for a vacancy in the Trinity. ~ Mark Twain

I never let my schoolin' interfere with my learnin' "___Mark Twain ~ Mark Twain

If you take epitaphs seriously, we ought to bury the living and resurrect the dead. ~ Mark Twain

It was such ecstacy to dream, and dream - till you got a bite.

A scorpion bite. Then the first duty was to get up out of the grass and kill the scorpion; and the next to bathe the bitten place with alcohol or brandy; and the next to resolve to keep out of the grass in the future. Then came an adjournment to the bedchamber and the pastime of writing up the day's journal with one hand and the destruction of mosquitoes with the other - a whole community of them at a slap. Then, observing an enemy approaching - a hairy tarantula on stilts - why not set the spittoon on him? It is done, and the projecting ends of his paws give a luminous idea of the magnitude of his reach. Then to bed and become a promenade for a centipede with forty-two legs on a side and every foot hot enough to burn a whole through a raw-hide. More soaking with alcohol, and a resolution to examine the bed before entering it, in future. Then wait, and suffer, till all the mosquitoes in the neighborhood have crawled in under the bar, then slip out quickly, shut them in and sleep peacefully on the floor till morning. Meantime, it is comforting to curse the tropics in occasional wakeful intervals. ~ Mark Twain

No man, deep down in the privacy of his heart, has any considerable respect for himself. ~ Mark Twain

And it is all as tranquil and reposeful as dreamland, and has nothing this-worldly about it - nothing to hang a fret or a worry upon. Until the unholy train comes tearing along - which it presently does, ripping the sacred solitude to rags and tatters with its devil's warwhoop and the roar and thunder of its rushing wheels - and ~ Mark Twain

And now we get realized to us once more another thing which we often forget - or try to: that no man has a wholly undiseased mind; that in one way or another all men are mad. ~ Mark Twain

In asking me to contribute a mite to the memorial to Gutenberg you give me pleasure and do me honor. The world concedes without hesitation or dispute that Gutenberg's invention is incomparably the mightiest event that has ever happened in profane history. It created a new and wonderful earth, and along with it a new hell. It has added new details, new developments and new marvels to both in every year during five centuries. It found Truth walking, and gave it a pair of wings; it found Falsehood trotting, and gave it two pair. It found Science hiding in corners and hunted; it has given it the freedom of the land, the seas and the skies, and made it the world's welcome quest. It found the arts and occupations few, it multiplies them every year. It found the inventor shunned and despised, it has made him great and given him the globe for his estate. It found religion a master and an oppression, it has made it man's friend and benefactor. It found War comparatively cheap but inefficient, it has made it dear but competent. It has set peoples free, and other peoples it has enslaved; it is the father and protector of human liberty, and it has made despotisms possible where they were not possible before. Whatever the world is, today, good and bad together, that is what Gutenberg's invention has made it: for from that source it has all come. But he has our homage; for what he said to the reproaching angel in his dream has come true, and the evil wrought through his mighty invention is ~ Mark Twain

A habit cannot be tossed out the window; it must be coaxed down the stairs a step at a time. ~ Mark Twain

In time, the Deity perceived that death was a mistake; a mistake, in that it was insufficient; insufficient, for the reason that while it was an admirable agent for the inflicting of misery upon the survivor, it allowed the dead person himself to escape from all further persecution in the blessed refuge of the grave. This was not satisfactory. A way must be conceived to pursue the dead beyond the tomb.
The Deity pondered this matter during four thousand years unsuccessfully, but as soon as he came down to earth and became a Christian his mind cleared and he knew what to do. He invented hell, and proclaimed it. ~ Mark Twain

Mark Twain said, 'The right word is to the nearly right word as lightning is to the lightning bug.' Fill your book with lightning. ~ Robert Littell

Certainly. Of course. That's part of it. And always coming to school or when we're going home, you're to walk with me, when there ain't anybody looking – and you choose me and I choose you at parties, because that's the way you do when you're engaged. ~ Mark Twain

Education is what you must acquire without any interference from your schooling. ~ Mark Twain

The mere knowledge of a fact is pale; but when you come to realize your fact, it takes on color. It is all the difference between hearing of a man being stabbed to the heart, and seeing it done. ~ Mark Twain

I will gradually drop this subject of graveyards. I have been trying all I could to get down to the sentimental part of it, but I cannot accomplish it. I think there is no genuinely sentimental part to it. It is all grotesque, ghastly, horrible. ~ Mark Twain

It's such an honor to receive the Mark Twain Prize. To get the same award that has been given to people like Bill Cosby, Tina Fey and Will Ferrell, it really makes me wonder ... why didn't I get this sooner? ~ Ellen DeGeneres

There was no place in the land where the seeker could not find some small budding sign of pity for the slave. No place in all the land but one - the pulpit. It yielded last; it always does. It fought a strong and stubborn fight, and then did what it always does, joined the procession - at the tail end. Slavery fell. The slavery texts in the Bible remained; the practice changed; that was all. ~ Mark Twain

A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read. ~ Mark Twain

Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example. ~ Mark Twain

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. ~ Mark Twain

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

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

Well, no doubt it's a blessed thing to have an imagination that can always make you satisfied, no matter how you are fixed. ~ Mark Twain

But we are all insane, anyway. Note the mountain-climbers. ~ Mark Twain

Be wise as a serpent and wary as a dove! ~ Mark Twain

These are sad days in literature. Homer is dead. Shakespeare is dead. And I myself am not feeling at all well. ~ Mark Twain

Whatever a man's age, he can reduce it several years by putting a bright-colored flower in his button-hole. ~ Mark Twain

Water, taken in moderation, cannot hurt anybody. ~ Mark Twain

In Honolulu, I saw cats, individual cats, groups of cats, platoons of cats, companies of cats, regiments of cats, armies of cats, multitudes of cats, millions of cats, and all of them sleek, fat, lazy and sound asleep. ~ Mark Twain

Truth is more of a stranger than fiction. ~ Mark Twain

The trouble with the world is not that people know too little; it's that they know so many things that just aren't so. ~ Mark Twain

I like Joan of Arc best of all my books; and it is the best; I know it perfectly well. ~ Mark Twain

A few fly bites cannot stop a spirited horse. ~ Mark Twain

Notwithstanding all this furniture, there was still room to turn around in, but not to swing a cat in, at least with entire security to the cat. However, the room was large, for a ship's stateroom, and was in every way satisfactory. ~ Mark Twain

None of us can be as great as God, but any of us can be as good. ~ Mark Twain

No alien land in all the world has any deep strong charm for me but one, no other land could so longingly and so beseechingly haunt me, sleeping and waking, through half a lifetime, as that one has done. Other things leave me, but it abides me; other things change, but it remains the same. For me its balmy airs are always blowing, its summer seas flashing in the sun; the pulsing of it surfbeat is in my ear; I can see its garland crags, its leaping cascades, its plumy palms drowsing by the shore, its remote summits floating like islands above the cloud wrack; I can feel the woodland solitudes, I can hear the splash of its brooks; in my nostrils still lives the breath of flowers that perished twenty years ago.
-MARK TWAIN in an 1889 Dinner Speech at Delmonico's in New York to honor two baseball teams that had just returned from touring the Pacific, including Honolulu. ~ John Richard Stephens

We are so identified with who we think we are that it limits how we can be, determines how we live, and conditions how we react. As Mark Twain said, It's not what we don't know that gets us in trouble, but what we are sure we know. ~ Lama Surya Das

Few authors have captivated the American penchant for curiosity like Samuel Longhorne Clemens. Many have called his cantankerous alter ego, Mark Twain, the greatest American humorist-philosopher of his age-if not of all times. With his wry observations and forthright humor-unleashed in his particularly pithy paragraphs-Mark Twain became one of the most prolific satirists in American literature.
The New York Times editorial, reporting of his death on April 22, 1910, said. " He has been quoted in common conversation oftener, perhaps, than any of his fellow-countrymen, including Benjamin Franklin and Lincoln.
In 1909, Mark Twain is quoted as saying, " I came in with Haley'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 Haley's Comet. The Almighty has said, no doubt: 'Now here are these two unaccountable freaks; they came in together, they must go out together."
His prediction was accurate-Mark Twain died of a heart attack on April 21, 1910, one day after the comet's closest approach to earth.
In Mark Twain's Guide to Audacious Sarcasm-volume 1,
Lowell Smith has assembled twenty of the classic cantankerous tales and wry observations of Mark Twain's celestial career. ~ Lowell Smith

There is one notable thing about our Christianity: bad, bloody, merciless, money-grabbing, and predatory. The invention of hell measured by our Christianity of today, bad as it is, hypocritical as it is, empty and hollow as it is, neither the deity nor his son is a Christian, nor qualified for that moderately high place. Ours is a terrible religion. The fleets of the world could swim in spacious comfort in the innocent blood it has spilled. ~ Mark Twain

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