Mark Twain Quotes

“A lie can make it half way around the world before the truth has time to put its boots on.”

“Gratitude and treachery are merely the two extremities of the same procession. You have seen all of it that is worth staying for when the band and the gaudy officials have gone by.”

“Germany, the diseased world's bathhouse.”

“Let us make a special effort to stop communicating with each other, so we can have some conversation.”

“Travel is lethal to prejudice.”

“It is better to support schools than jails.”

“What a curious kind of fool a girl is. Never been licked in school. What's a licking?”

“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.”

“It is not in the least likely that any life has ever been lived which was not a failure in the secret judgment of the person who lived it.”

“Eating and sleeping are the only activities that should be allowed to interrupt a man's enjoyment of his cigar.”

“For the majority of us, the past is a regret, the future an experiment”

“I have carried a revolver; lots of us do, but they are the most innocent things in the world.”

“Citizenship is what makes a republic - monarchies can get along without it.”

“Simple rules for saving money: To save half, when you are fired by an eager impulse to contribute to a charity, wait and count to forty. To save three quarters, count sixty. To save all, count sixty-five.”

“America cannot have an empire abroad and a Republic at home.”

“There is no accounting for human beings.”

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

“To succeed in the other trades, capacity must be shown; in the law, concealment of it will do.”

“I was in one of the most grand attitudes I ever struck, with my arm stretched up pointing to the sun. It was a noble effect. You could see the shudder sweep the mass like a wave.”

“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.”

“When we do not know a person - and also when we do - we have to judge his size by the size and nature of his achievements, as compared with the achievements of others in his special line of business - there is no other way.”

“A sincere compliment is always grateful to a lady, so long as you don't try to knock her down with it.”

“Where are there are two desires in a man's heart he has no choice between the two but must obey the strongest, there being no such thing as free will in the composition of any human being that ever lived.”

“France has usually been governed by prostitutes”

“Ignorance is not not knowin' - Ignorance is knowin' what ain't so.”