Noteable Mark Twain Quotes

"Write without pay until somebody offers to pay you. If nobody offers within three years, sawing wood is what you were intended for."

"Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great."

"People born to be hanged are safe in water."

"Good breeding consists in concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of the other person."

"Man is the only animal that blushes, or needs to."

"Only presidents, editors and people with tapeworm have the right to use the editorial 'we'."

"Under certain circumstances, profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer."

"You cannot depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus."

"I don't give a damn for a man who can spell a word only one way."

"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education."

"God made the Idiot for practice, and then He made the School Board."

"All kings is mostly rapscallions."

"It is not best that we all should think alike, it is differences of opinion that make horse races."

"It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them."

"Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of congress. But I repeat myself."

"The human race has one really effective weapon, and that is laughter."

"Always do right; this will gratify some people and astonish the rest."

"Let us be thankful for the fools. But for them the rest of us could not succeed."

"I was gratified to be able to answer promptly. I said, "I don't know."

"Familiarity breeds contempt - and children."

"It is by the fortune of God that, in this country, we have three benefits: freedom of speech, freedom of thought, and the wisdom never to use either."

"It is better to deserve honors and not have them than to have them and not deserve them."

"If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man."

"By trying we can easily learn to endure adversity. Another man's, I mean."

"I have a higher and greater standard of principle. Washington could not lie. I can lie but I won't."

"Denial ain't just a river in Egypt."

"Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company."

"I have never taken any exercise except sleeping and resting."

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

"I am opposed to millionaires, but it would be dangerous to offer me the position."

"Get your facts first and then you can distort them as much as you wish."

"Golf is a good walk spoiled."

"I refused to attend his funeral. But I wrote a very nice letter explaining that I approved of it."

"The Bible has noble poetry in it; and some clever fables; and some blood-drenched history; and a wealth of obscenity; and upwards of a thousand lies."

"It takes more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech."

"To succeed in life, you need two things: ignorance and confidence."

"Truth is more of a stranger than fiction."

"Wagner's music is better than it sounds."

"We have a criminal jury system which is superior to any in the world; and its efficiency is only marred by the difficulty of finding twelve men every day who don't know anything and can't read."

"There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact."

"The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug."

"There is nothing so annoying as to have two people talking when you're busy interrupting."

"When angry, count to four; when very angry, swear."

"When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But, when I got to be twenty- one, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years."

"Whenever you find that you are on the side of the majority, it is time to reform."

"Let us endeavor to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry."
"Why shouldn't truth be stranger than fiction? Fiction, after all, has to make sense."

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

"The first half of life consists of the capacity to enjoy without the chance; the last half consists of the chance without the capacity."

"The principle of give and take is the principle of diplomacy - give one and take ten."

"It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly American criminal class except Congress."

"A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read."

"The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them."

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