Twain, Mark (1835 – 1910), US humourist, novelist, short story author, & wit
I cannot call to mind a single instance where I have ever been irreverent, except toward the things which were sacred to other people.
A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.
The history of our race, and each individual’s experience, are sown thick with evidence that a truth is not hard to kill and that a lie told well is immortal.
Whenever you find that you are on the side of the majority, it is time to reform.
All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence; then success is sure.
Many a small thing has been made large by the right kind of advertising.
Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear – not absence of fear.
Do something every day that you don’t want to do; this is the golden rule for acquiring the habit of doing your duty without pain.
It was wonderful to find America, but it would have been more wonderful to miss it.
A banker is a fellow who lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining, but wants it back the minute it begins to rain.
Man is the Only Animal that Blushes. Or needs to.
Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint.
The man who doesn’t read good books has no advantage over the man who can’t read them.
A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.
Of all God’s creatures there is only one that cannot be made the slave of the lash. That one is the cat. If man could be crossed with cat it would improve man, but it would deteriorate the cat.
Let us so live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.
A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval.
The best way to cheer yourself is to try to cheer someone else up.
In religion and politics, people’s beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second hand, and without examination.
It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare.
Good breeding consists of concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of the other person.
He had discovered a great law of human action, without knowing it – namely, that in order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to obtain.
The report of my death was an exaggeration.
I have been dead for billions of years before I was born and never suffered the smallest inconvenience.
When a person cannot deceive himself the chances are against his being able to deceive other people.
A human being has a natural desire to have more of a good thing than he needs.
Education: that which reveals to the wise, and conceals from the stupid, the vast limits of their knowledge.
Don’t go round saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. The world was here first.
It takes your enemy and your friend, working together, to hurt you: the one to slander you, and the other to get the news to you.
An enemy can partly ruin a man, but it takes a good-natured injudicious friend to complete the thing and make it perfect.
An Englishman is a person who does things because they have been done before. An American is a person who does things because they haven’t been done before.
I have never taken any exercise except sleeping and resting.
Get your facts first, then you can distort them as much as you please.
I am not one of those who in expressing opinions confine themselves to facts.
Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn’t.
Let us be thankful for the fools. But for them the rest of us could not succeed.
Part of the secret of success in life is to eat what you like and let the food fight it out inside.
I didn’t attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying that I approved of it.
Golf is a good walk spoilt.
Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example.
Habit is habit, and not to be flung out the window, but coaxed downstairs a step at a time.
Barring that natural expression of villainy which we all have, the man looked honest enough.
If you tell the truth you don’t have to remember anything.
It is better to deserve honours and not have them than to have them and not to deserve them.
The human race has one really effective weapon, and that is laughter.
Humanity has unquestionably one really effective weapon—laughter. Power, money, persuasion, supplication, persecution—these can lift at a colossal humbug—push it a little—weaken it a little, century by century; but only laughter can blow it to rags and atoms at a blast. Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand.
Humour is the great thing, the saving thing. The minute it crops up, all our irritations and resentments slip away and a sunny spirit takes their place.
When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained.
Grief can take care of itself, but to get the full value of joy you must have somebody to divide it with.
I have a higher and grander standard of principle than George Washington. He could not lie; I can, but won’t.
The worst loneliness is not to be comfortable with yourself.
Of all the animals, man is the only one that is cruel. He is the only one that inflicts pain for the pleasure of doing it.
Of all the creatures that were made, man is the most detestable. Of the entire brood he is the only one – the solitary one – that possesses malice. That is the basest of all instincts, passions, vices – the most hateful. He is the only creature that has pain for sport, knowing it to be pain. Also – in all the list he is the only creature that has a nasty mind.
Time cools, time clarifies; no mood can be maintained quite unaltered through the course of hours.
The fact that man knows right from wrong proves his intellectual superiority to other creatures; but the fact that he can do wrong proves his moral inferiority to any creature that cannot.
Often it does seem a pity that Noah and his party did not miss the boat.
The rule is perfect: in all matters of opinion our adversaries are insane.
Sane and intelligent human beings are like all other human beings, and carefully and cautiously and diligently conceal their private real opinions from the world and give out fictitious ones in their stead for general consumption.
Our opinions do not really blossom into fruition until we have expressed them to someone else.
The right word may be effective, but no word was ever as effective as a rightly timed pause.
Never put off until tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow.
The radical of one century is the conservative of the next. The radical invents the views. When he has worn them out the conservative adopts them.
Religion consists in a set of things which the average man thinks he believes and wishes he was certain of.
Suppose you were an idiot and suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.
When people do not respect us we are sharply offended; yet deep down in his private heart no man much respects himself.
I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.
Most people are bothered by those passages of Scripture they do not understand, but the passages that bother me are those I do understand.
It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.
It usually takes more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech.
It is easier to stay out than get out.
I have been through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened.
There are several good protections against temptations, but the surest is cowardice.
When in doubt, tell the truth.
Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest.
It was only just words, words,—they meant nothing in the world to him, I might just as well have whistled. Words realize nothing, vivify nothing to you, unless you have suffered in your own person the thing which the words try to describe.
Even the dullest pencil is better than the sharpest memory.
You cannot depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.
What a good thing Adam had. When he said a good thing he knew nobody had said it before.
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.
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.
I was gratified to be able to answer promptly. I said I don’t know.
Familiarity breeds contempt – and children.
The holy passion of Friendship is of so sweet and steady and loyal and enduring a nature that it will last through a whole lifetime, if not asked to lend money.
There are people who strictly deprive themselves of each and every eatable, drinkable, and smokable which has in any way acquired a shady reputation. They pay this price for health. And health is all they get for it. How strange it is. It is like paying out your whole fortune for a cow that has gone dry.
The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.
In Paris they simply stared when I spoke to them in French; I never did succeed in making those idiots understand their language.
I don’t give a damn for a man who can only spell a word one way.
Truth is more of a stranger than fiction.
Just the omission of Jane Austen’s books alone would make a fairly good library out of a library that hadn’t a book in it.
We have not the reverent feeling for the rainbow that a savage has, because we know how it is made. We have lost as much as we gained by prying into that matter.
Why do you sit there looking like an envelope without an address on it?
Facts are stubborn things, but statistics are more pliable.
Honesty is the best policy… when there’s money in it.
Don’t part with your illusions. When they are gone you may still exist, but you have ceased to live.
Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.
In the first place, God made idiots. That was for practice. Then he made school boards.
The universal brotherhood of man is our most precious possession.
There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.
When you cannot get a compliment any other way pay yourself one.
We are always more anxious to be distinguished for a talent which we do not possess, than to be praised for the fifteen which we do possess.
How little a thing can make us happy when we feel that we have earned it.
