Mark Twain Quotes - Page 2

The best way to cheer yourself is to try to cheer somebody else up.

I haven't a particle of confidence in a man who has no redeeming petty vices whatsoever.

The easy confidence with which I know another man's religion is folly teaches me to suspect that my own is also.

Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education.

Nothing exists; all is a dream. God—man—the world—the sun, the moon, the wilderness of stars—a dream, all a dream; they have no existence. Nothing exists save empty space—and you!

When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained.

That's the difference between governments and individuals. Governments don't care, individuals do.

A public library is the most enduring of memorials, the trustiest monument for the preservation of an event or a name or an affection; for it, and it only, is respected by wars and revolutions, and survives

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

I've lived through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened.

Patriotism is supporting your country all the time and your government when it deserves it.

Be respectful to your superiors, if you have any.

A hypocritical businessman, whose fortune had been the misfortune of many others, told Mark Twain piously, “Before I die I intend to make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. I want to climb to the top of Mount Sinai and read the Ten Commandments aloud.” “I have a better idea,” suggested Twain. “Why don’t you stay right at home in Boston and keep them?

If a cat sits on a hot stove, that cat won't sit on a hot stove again. That cat won't sit on a cold stove either. That cat just don't like stoves.

Put all thine eggs in one basket and - watch that basket.

I lost Susy thirteen years ago; I lost her mother--her incomparable mother!--five and a half years ago; Clara has gone away to live in Europe and now I have lost Jean. How poor I am, who was once so rich! . . . Jean lies yonder, I sit here; we are strangers under our own roof; we kissed hands good-by at this door last night--and it was forever, we never suspecting it. She lies there, and I sit here--writing, busying myself, to keep my heart from breaking. How dazzling the sunshine is flooding the hills around! It is like a mockery. Seventy-four years ago twenty-four days. Seventy-four years old yesterday. Who can estimate my age today?

NOTICEPersons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.BY ORDER OF THE AUTHORPer G.G.,Chief of Ordnance

The common eye sees only the outside of things, and judges by that, but the seeing eye pierces through and reads the heart and the soul.

April 1. This is the day upon which we are reminded of what we are on the other three hundred and sixty-four.

Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason.

There is a charm about the forbidden that makes it unspeakably desirable.

It don't make no difference whether you do right or wrong, a person's conscience ain't got no sense, and just goes for him anyway.

A mighty porterhouse steak an inch and a half thick, hot and sputtering from the griddle; dusted with fragrant pepper; enriched with little melting bits of butter of the most impeachable freshness and genuineness; the precious juices of the meat trickling out and joining the gravy, archipelagoed with mushrooms; a township or two of tender, yellowish fat gracing an out-lying district of this ample county of beefsteak; the long white bone which divides the sirloin from the tenderloin still in its place.

Evolution is the law of policies: Darwin said it, Socrates endorsed it, Cuvier proved it and established it for all time in his paper on 'The Survival of the Fittest.' These are illustrious names, this is a mighty doctrine: nothing can ever remove it from its firm base, nothing dissolve it, but evolution.

There are several good protections against temptation but the surest is cowardice.

I can last two months on a good compliment.

If man could be crossed with a cat, it would improve man but deteriorate the cat.

It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.

To be satisfied with what one has that is wealth. As long as one sorely needs a certain additional amount that man isn't rich.

What would men be without women? Scarce, sir...mighty scarce.

From his cradle to the grave a man never does a single thing which has any first and foremost object save one-to secure peace of mind spiritual comfort for himself.

It is discouraging to try to penetrate a mind like yours. You ought to get it out and dance on it. That would take some of the rigidity out of it.

The worst loneliness is not to be comfortable with yourself.

Nature has no originality--I mean, no large ability in the matter of inventing new things, new ideas, new stage effects. She has a superb and amazing and infinitely varied equipment of old ones, but she never adds to them. She repeats--repeats--repeats--repeats. Examine your memory and your experience; you will find it is true.

Obscurity and a competence—that is the life that is best worth living.

Memories which someday will become all beautiful when the last annoyance that encumbers them shall have faded out of our minds.

Necessity is the mother of taking chances.

Familiarity breeds contempt and children.

Heaven goes by favor if it went by merit you would stay out and your dog would go in.

There are two kinds of patriotism -- monarchical patriotism and republican patriotism. In the one case the government and the king may rightfully furnish you their notions of patriotism; in the other, neither the government nor the entire nation is privileged to dictate to any individual what the form of his patriotism shall be. The gospel of the monarchical patriotism is: "The King can do no wrong." We have adopted it with all its servility, with an unimportant change in the wording: "Our country, right or wrong!" We have thrown away the most valuable asset we had:-- the individual's right to oppose both flag and country when he (just he, by himself) believed them to be in the wrong. We have thrown it away; and with it all that was really respectable about that grotesque and laughable word, Patriotism.

Always do what is right. It will gratify half of mankind and astound the other.

When majority is insane, sane must go to asylum.

What a good thing Adam had - when he said a good thing he knew nobody had said it before.

Never allow someone to be your priority while allowing yourself to be their option.

A few fly bites cannot stop a spirited horse.

One ought always to lie, when one can do good by it;

Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear - not absence of fear.

Now, then, that is the tale. Some of it is true.

Biographies are but the clothes and buttons of the man - the biography of the man himself cannot be written.

Adam was but human—this explains it all. He did not want the apple for the apple's sake, he wanted it only because it was forbidden. The mistake was in not forbidding the serpent; then he would have eaten the serpent.

Evolution is a blind giant who rolls a snowball down a hill. The ball is made of flakes—circumstances. They contribute to the mass without knowing it. They adhere without intention, and without foreseeing what is to result. When they see the result they marvel at the monster ball and wonder how the contriving of it came to be originally thought out and planned. Whereas there was no such planning, there was only a law: the ball once started, all the circumstances that happened to lie in its path would help to build it, in spite of themselves.

Humor is mankind's greatest blessing.

I went to Maui to stay a week and remained five. I never spent so pleasant a month before, or bade any place goodbye so regretfully. I have not once thought of business, or care or human toil or trouble or sorrow or weariness, and the memory of it will remain with me always.

Well, everybody does it that way, Huck.""Tom, I am not everybody.