Mark Twain Quotes

“The man who sets out to carry a cat by its tail learns something that will always be useful and which never will grow dim or doubtful.”

“How superbly brave is the Englishman in the presence of the awfulest forms of danger and death; and how abject in the presence of any and all forms of hereditary rank.”

“To forget pain is to be painless; to forget care is to be rid of it; to go abroad is to accomplish both.”

“The true charm of pedestrians does not lie in the walking, or in the scenery, but in the talking.”

“Our lives, our liberty, and our property are never in greater danger than when Congress is in session.”

“Why waste your money looking up your family tree? Just go into politics and your opponent will do it for you.”

“I wish I could make him understand that a loving good heart is riches enough, and that without it intellect is poverty.”

“Forget and forgive. This is not difficult when properly understood.”

“Every time you stop a school, you will have to build a jail.”

“If the desire to kill and the opportunity to kill came always together, who would escape hanging?”

“How little a thing can make us happy when we feel that we have earned it.”

“I would rather have my ignorance than another man's knowledge, because I have so much of it.”

“I hope all of us may eventually be together in everlasting peace and bliss -- except the inventor of the #‎ telephone .”

“In the small town of Hannibal, Missouri, when I was a boy, everybody was poor, but didn't know it; and everybody was comfortable and did know it.”

“It is so unsatisfactory to read a noble passage and have no one you love at hand to share the happiness with you. And it is unsatisfactory to read to one's self anyhow - for the uttered voice so heightens the expression.”

“The old man laughed loud and joyously, shook up the details of his anatomy from head to foot, and ended by saying that such a laugh was money in a man's pocket, because it cut down the doctor's bills like everything.”

“The two Great Unknowns, the two Illustrious Conjecturabilities! They are the best known unknown persons that have ever drawn breath upon the planet.”

“The writing begins when you’ve finished. Only then do you know what you’re trying to say.”

“An adventure is something that while it's happening you wish it wasn't.”

“No one has ever seen a Republican mass meeting that was devoid of the perception of the ludicrous.”

“Until I came to New Mexico, I never realized how much beauty water adds to a river.”

“I suppose, just as an honest man in politics shines more than he would elsewhere.”

“Tell me about a person's family, friends, and community, and I'll tell you what his opinions are.”

“I have criticized absent people so often, and then discovered, to my humiliation, that I was talking with their relatives, that I have grown superstitious about that sort of thing and dropped it.”

“I have done more for San Francisco than any of its old residents. Since I left there it has increased in population fully 300,000. I could have done more - I could have gone earlier - it was suggested.”