Quotes by
Mark Twain |
1835-1910 , American writer
Samuel Langhorne Clemens, known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American writer, humorist, entrepreneur, publisher and lecturer. Among his novels are The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and its sequel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885), the latter often called “The Great American Novel.”. | 72 quotes | 24,893 visits |
Quotations
| • | Never argue with stupid people, they will drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience. 121 |
| • | A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes. 54 |
| • | It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt. 46 |
| • | If you tell the truth you don't have to remember anything. 38 |
| • | Suppose you were an idiot and suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself. 36 |
| • | If voting made any difference they wouldn't let us do it. 35 |
| • | When in doubt, tell the truth. 22 |
| • | Never argue with a fool, onlookers may not be able to tell the difference. 21 |
| • | Anyone who stops learning is old, whether twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young. The greatest thing you can do is keep your mind young. 20 |
| • | The Bible has noble poetry in it... and some good morals and a wealth of obscenity, and upwards of a thousand lies. 19 |
| • | When in doubt tell the truth. It will confound your enemies and astound your friends. 15 |
| • | The worst loneliness is to not be comfortable with yourself. 15 |
| • | It's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog. 15 |
| • | Honesty: The best of all the lost arts. 13 |
| • | Good judgment is the result of experience and experience the result of bad judgment. 13 |
| • | Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company. 13 |
| • | Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover. 12 |
| • | Civilization is a limitless multiplication of unnecessary necessaries. 12 |
| • | Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter. 12 |
| • | The right word may be effective, but no word was ever as effective as a rightly timed pause. 12 |
| • | The rule is perfect: in all matters of opinion our adversaries are insane. 12 |
| • | Most people are bothered by those passages of Scripture they do not understand, but the passages that bother me are those I do understand. 12 |
| • | Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear - not absence of fear. 11 |
| • | Whenever you find that you are on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect. 11 |
| • | The best way to cheer yourself is to try to cheer someone else up. 11 |
| • | I have never let my schooling interfere with my education. 11 |
| • | 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. 11 |
| • | Explaining humor is a lot like dissecting a frog, you learn a lot in the process, but in the end you kill it. 10 |
| • | There are several good protections against temptations, but the surest is cowardice. 10 |
| • | Of the delights of this world, man cares most for sexual intercourse yet he has left it out of his
heaven. 9 |
| • | What gets us into trouble is not what we don't know. It's what we know for sure that just ain't so. 9 |
| • | Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example. 9 |
| • | When I was younger, I could remember anything, whether it had happened or not. 9 |
| • | In his private heart no man respects himself. 9 |
| • | Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn't. 9 |
| • | The easy confidence with which I know another man's religion is folly teaches me to suspect that my own is also. 7 |
| • | I have been complimented many times and they always embarrass me; I always feel that they have not said enough. 7 |
| • | A man's character may be learned from the adjectives which he habitually uses in conversation. 7 |
| • | The secret source of humor is not joy but sorrow; there is no humor in heaven. 7 |
| • | History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme. 7 |
| • | You cannot depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus. 7 |
| • | The human race has one really effective weapon, and that is laughter. 7 |
| • | Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest. 7 |
| • | The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time. 6 |
| • | Let us swear while we may, for in heaven it will not be allowed. 6 |
| • | Never be haughty to the humble, never be humble to the haughty. 6 |
| • | Noise proves nothing. Often a hen who has laid an egg cackles as if she had laid an asteroid. 6 |
| • | The most interesting information come from children, for they tell all they know and then stop. 6 |
| • | Any emotion, if it is sincere, is involuntary. 6 |
| • | When a person cannot deceive himself the chances are against his being able to deceive other people. 6 |
| • | Man is the only animal that Blushes. Or needs to. 6 |
| • | I have been through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened. 6 |
| • | Thunder is good, thunder is impressive; but it is lightning that does the work. 5 |
| • | Definition of a classic — something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read. 5 |
| • | There are three things men can do with women: love them, suffer them, or turn them into literature. 5 |
| • | It's easy to make friends, but hard to get rid of them. 5 |
| • | Good friends, good books, and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life. 5 |
| • | Writing is easy. All you have to do is cross out the wrong words. 4 |
| • | When angry, count four. When very angry, swear. 4 |
| • | Wrinkles should merely indicate where the smiles have been. 4 |
| • | The man who doesn't read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them. 4 |
| • | Grief can take care of itself, but to get the full value of a joy you must have somebody to divide it with. 4 |
| • | Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please. 4 |
| • | Action speaks louder than words but not nearly as often. 3 |
Funny Quotes
| • | If Christ were here, there is one thing he would not be—a Christian. 26 |
| • | Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason. 18 |
| • | The report of my death was an exaggeration. 10 |
| • | The only way to keep your health is to eat what you don’t want, drink what you don’t like, and do what you’d rather not. 9 |
| • | Giving up smoking is the easiest thing in the world. I know because I've done it thousands of times. 8 |
| • | Never put off until tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow. 8 |
| • | In Paris they simply stared when I spoke to them in French; I never did succeed in making those idiots understand their language. 7 |
| • | I do not like work even when someone else is doing it. 5 |
