Mark Twain Quotes

“The citizen who thinks he sees that the commonwealth's political clothes are worn out, and yet holds his peace and does not agitate for a new suit, is disloyal, he is a traitor. That he may be the only one who thinks he sees this decay, does not excuse him: it is his duty to agitate anyway, and it is the duty of others to vote him down if they do not see the matter as he does.”

“One may make their house a palace of sham, or they can make it a home, a refuge.”

“In Marseilles they make half the toilet soap we consume in America, but the Marseillaise only have a vague theoretical idea of its use, which they have obtained from books of travel.”

“When one's character begins to fall under suspicion and disfavor, how swift, then, is the work of disintegration and destruction.”

“Yes, even I am dishonest. Not in many ways, but in some. Forty-one, I think it is.”

“Hain't we got all the fools in town on our side? And hain't that a big enough majority in any town?”

“When a person is accustomed to one hundred and thirty-eight in the shade, his ideas about cold weather are not valuable.”

“Noise proves nothing. Often a hen who has merely laid an egg cackles as if she laid an asteroid.”

“Often the surest way to convey misinformation is to tell the strict truth.”

“I notice that you use plain, simple language, short words and brief sentences. That is the way to write English―it is the modern way and the best way. Stick to it; don't let fluff and flowers and verbosity creep in. When you catch an adjective, kill it. No, I don't mean utterly, but kill most of them―then the rest will be valuable. They weaken when they are close together. They give strength when they are wide apart. An adjective habit, or a wordy, diffuse, flowery habit, once fastened upon a person, is as hard to get rid of as any other vice.”

“There is nothing training cannot do. Nothing is above its reach. It can turn bad morals to good; it can destroy bad principles and recreate good ones; it can lift men to angelship.”

“A crime persevered in a thousand centuries ceases to be a crime, and becomes a virtue. This is the law of custom, and custom supersedes all other forms of law.”

“Lord save us all from old age and broken health and a hope tree that has lost the faculty of putting out blossoms.”

“When I want to read something nice, I sit down and write it myself.”

“Knowledge becomes wisdom only after it has been put to good use.”

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

“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.”

“The frankest and freest product of the human mind and heart is a love letter; the writer gets his limitless freedom of statement and expression from his sense that no stranger is going to see what he is writing.”

“One thing at a time, is my motto - and just play that thing for all it is worth, even if it's only tto pair and a jack.”

“We called him Barney for short. We couldn't use his real name, there wasn't time.”

“The rule is perfect: in all matters of opinion our adversaries are insane.”

“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. . . .”

“Let us consider that we are all partially insane. It will explain us to each other; it will unriddle many riddles; it will make clear and simple many things which are involved in haunting and harassing difficulties and obscurities now.”

“How lovely is death; and how niggardly it is doled out.”

“...many foolish persons, wanderers from other parts, have the vain fashion of graving their names and the obscure places whence they come, upon its stones, which is silly and marketh the doer for a fool.”