Mark Twain Quotes

Truth is mighty and will prevail. There is nothing wrong with this, except that it ain't so.

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

I am persuaded that the world has been tricked into adopting some false and most pernicious notions about consistency - and to such a degree that the average man has turned the rights and wrongs of things entirely around and is proud to be "consistent," unchanging, immovable, fossilized, where it should be his humiliation.

What is the most rigorous law of our being? Growth. No smallest atom of our moral, mental, or physical structure can stand still a year. It grows - it must grow; nothing can prevent it.

To believe yourself brave is to be brave; it is the one only essential thing.

Wagner’s music is better than it sounds.

I don't want no better book than what your face is.

The master minds of all nations, in all ages, have sprung in affluent multitude from the mass of the nations, and from the mass of the nation only-not from its privileged classes.

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.

Really, what we want now, is not laws against crime, but a law against insanity. That is where the true evil lies.

There's nobody for me to attack in this matter even with soft and gentle ridicule-and I shouldn't ever think of using a grown up weapon in this kind of a nursery. Above all, I couldn't venture to attack the clergymen whom you mention, for I have their habits and live in the same glass house which they are occupying. I am always reading immoral books on the sly, and then selfishly trying to prevent other people from having the same wicked good time.

Inherently, each one of us has the substance within to achievewhatever our goals and dreams define. What is differentfor each of us is the training, education, knowledge and insight to utilize what we already have.

We can't always have the beautiful aspect of things. Let us make the most of our sights that are beautiful and let the others go

The newspaper that obstructs the law on a trivial pretext, for money's sake, is a dangerous enemy to the public weal. That awful power, the public opinion of a nation, is created in America by a horde of ignorant, self-complacent simpletons who failed at ditching and shoemaking and fetched up in journalism on their way to the poorhouse.

It has always been a peculiarity of the human race that it keeps two sets of morals in stock-the private and the real, and the public and the artificial.

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

Life should begin with age and its privileges and accumulations, and end with youth and its capacity to splendidly enjoy such advantages.

The slowness of one section of the world about adopting the valuable ideas of another section of it is a curious thing and unaccountable.

Whose property is my body? Probably mine. I so regard it. If I experiment with it, who must be answerable? I, not the State. If I choose injudiciously, does the state die? Oh, no.

I said nothing of the sort.

I've seen many troubles in my time, only half of which ever came true.

There is nothing that saps one's confidence as the knowing how to do a thing

Prosperity is the surest breeder of insolence I know.

The government is merely a servant―merely a temporary servant; it cannot be its prerogative to determine what is right and what is wrong, and decide who is a patriot and who isn't. Its function is to obey orders, not originate them.

Each of you, for himself, by himself and on his own responsibility, must speak.

All schools, all colleges have two great functions: to confer, and to conceal valuable knowledge.

Out of the depths of my happy heart wells a great tide of love and prayer for this priceless treasure that is confided to my lifelong keeping. You cannot see its waves as they flow toward you, darling, but in these lines you will hear...the distant beating of its surf.

Look at you in war...There has never been a just one, never an honorable one, on the part of the instigator of the war.

If we read the words and attitudes of the past through the pompous "wisdom" of the considered moral judgments of the present, we will find nothing but error.

There's always something about your success that displeases even your best friends.

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.

Never have a battle of wits with an unarmed person.

I ordinarily smoke fifteen cigars during my five hours' labours, and if my interest reaches the enthusiastic point, I smoke more. I smoke with all my might, and allow no intervals.

Honor is a harder master than the law.

Some people bring joy wherever they go, and some people bring joy whenever they go.

Braveness is resistance to concern, mastery of panic - not absense of anxiety.

You know that kind of quiver that trembles around through you when you are seeing something so strange and enchanting and wonderful that it is just a fearful joy to be alive and look at it; and you know how you gaze, and your lips turn dry and your breath comes short, but you wouldn't be anywhere but there, not for the world.

Make your vacation your vocation.

Well, my book is written-let it go. But if it were only to write over again there wouldn't be so many things left out. They burn in me; and they keep multiplying; but now they can't ever be said. And besides, they would require a library-and a pen warmed up in hell.

Once I talked to the inmates of an insane asylum in Hartford. I have talked to idiots a thousand times, but only once to the insane.

Everything human is pathetic

It consists mainly of the storm of thoughts that is forever blowing through one's head.

There is no security in life, only opportunity.

It is wiser to find out than to suppose.

A discriminating irreverence is the creator and protector of human liberty.

...the administration of the law can never go lax where every individual sees to it that it grows not lax in his own case, or in cases which fall under his eyes.

How slow and still the time did drag along.

It's so damned humiliating.

I could have become a soldier if I had waited; I knew more about retreating than the man who invented retreating.

A little more kindness, A little less speed, A little more giving, A little less greed, A little more smile, A little less frown, A little less kicking, A man while he's down, A little more "We", A little less "I", A little more laugh, A little less cry, A little more flowers, On the pathway of life, And fewer on graves, At the end of the strife.

It is easier to stay out than get out.

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

Don't wake up a woman in love. Let her dream, so that she does not weep when she returns to her bitter reality

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

Be good and you will be lonely.

Most men die at 27, we just bury them at 72.

If you have nothing to say, say nothing.

Everything has its limit - iron ore cannot be educated into gold.

There is not an acre of ground on the globe that is in possession of its rightful owner, or that has not been taken away from owner after owner, cycle afer cycle, by force and bloodshed.

All I say is, kings is kings, and you got to make allowances. Take them all around, they're a mighty ornery lot. It's the way they're raised.