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Mark Twain Quotes

Total quotes: 140
“You can’t reason with your heart; it has its own laws, and thumps about things which the intellect scorns.”
— Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
Tagged: heart, Feelings, emotions, own laws, thumping, Rules, intellect scorns, reasoning with heart, Heart And Mind
“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.”
— Mark Twain, Following the Equator: A journey around the world
“Good books, good friends and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.”
— Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi
Tagged: good life, Reading, Books, Friendship, Friends, Relaxation, relax, Peace, calm, Quiet, Lifestyle, ideal life, the dream, American Dream
“In the beginning of a change, the patriot is a scarce man, and brave, and hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a patriot.”
— Mark Twain, 20 Memorable Veteran’s Day Quotes
Tagged: Hero, Veterans
“There is a charm about the forbidden that makes it unspeakably desirable.”
— Mark Twain, Mark Twain on Common Sense: Timeless Advice and Words of Wisdom from America’s Most-Revered Humorist
Tagged: Forbidden, Desirable, Mystery, Temptation, Sin
“The air up there in the clouds is very pure and fine, bracing and delicious. And why shouldn't it be?--it is the same the angels breathe.”
— Mark Twain, Roughing It
Tagged: Angels, Purity, Fine, Thoughts, Heaven, Nature, Peace, peacefulness, Life
“Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured.”
— Mark Twain, A quote by Mark Twain
Tagged: Anger, emotions, Feelings
“If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.”
— Mark Twain, Mark Twain's Notebook
Tagged: Truth, tell the truth, tell, say, Remembering, recall, remember, Honesty, truthfulness
“You can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.”
— Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
Tagged: depend, Imagination, Vision, Future, Mind, thoughtfulness, Perception, connectedness, Experience, Trust, Self-awareness, Think, mental power
“Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest.”
— Mark Twain, Mark Twain: Wit and Wisecracks
Tagged: Doing it right
“He was sunshine most always-I mean he made it seem like good weather.”
— Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Amazon Classics Edition)
Tagged: Goodness, Sunshine, Relationships, Love, personable, Charisma, Personality
“To get the full value of a joy you must have somebody to divide it with.”
— Mark Twain, 25 Quotes on Love from Great Authors
Tagged: Romantic Love Quotes, Timeless Love Quotes
“Many a small thing has been made large by the right kind of advertising.”
— Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
“I came in with Halley's Comet in 1835. It is coming again next year, and I expect to go out with it.”
— Mark Twain, Halley's Comet: Facts About the Most Famous Comet
Tagged: Motions of Space
“When I am king they shall not have bread and shelter only, but also teachings out of books, for a full belly is little worth where the mind is starved.”
— Mark Twain, The Prince and the Pauper
Tagged: king, Wealth, Learning, Teaching, Teachers, Knowledge, hungry for knowledge, starved, play on words, Values, Meaning, Life
“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.”
— Mark Twain, Pudd'nhead Wilson
Tagged: adam, eve, adam & eve, the forbidden apple, Forbidden, Human Nature, humanity, Mistakes, mistake, serpent, Desire, Longing, consumption, want what you can't have
“Man is the Reasoning Animal. Such is the claim. I think it is open to dispute.”
— Mark Twain, Letters from the Earth
Tagged: Reason, Man, humanity, Animals, animal, savage, stupidity, idiocy, idiots, America, Society, Human Nature, foolish, civilization, issues, problematic
“My experience of men had long ago taught me that one of the surest ways of begetting an enemy was to do some stranger an act of kindness which should lay upon him the irritating sense of an obligation.”
— Mark Twain, The Autobiography of Mark Twain
Tagged: angel, Good, Life, Living, beauty, kindness, pass it on, golden rule, Obligation, Strangers, humanity, humankind, morals, Ethics, Goodness, Experiences, lifehistory, Enemy, keep your enemies close
“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 man.”
— Mark Twain, The Psychology of Gratitude
Tagged: Dogs, humans, Compassion
“I wish Europe would let Russia annihilate Turkey a little--not much, but enough to make it difficult to find the place again without a divining-rod or a diving-bell.”
— Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad
“Noise proves nothing. Often a hen who has merely laid an egg cackles as if she had laid an asteroid.”
— Mark Twain, Following the Equator: A journey around the world
“Benares is older than history, older than tradition, older even than legend, and looks twice as old as all of them put together.”
— Mark Twain, Following the Equator: A journey around the world
Tagged: Where You Go to Die, Ganges
“The proper office of a friend is to side with you when you are wrong. Nearly anybody will side with you when you are right.”
— Mark Twain, Mark Twain Quotes
Tagged: Friends, Friendship, Being Right
“Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things can not be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.”
— Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad
Tagged: Wisdom, wholesome, Views, Men, humanity, Value, Experiences, travel, Learning, Growing Up, different, exchange, abroad, Culture, expanding, expand the mind, Acceptance, improve yourself, Self-awareness, inclusiveness, international
“Words are only painted fire, a look is the fire itself. She gave that look, and carried it away to the treasury of heaven, where all things that are divine belong.”
— Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
Tagged: Words, Power of Words, look, Women, Power, Heaven, divinity, humanity, power of a look, actions, actions speak louder than words
“Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example.”
— Mark Twain, Pudd'nhead Wilson
Tagged: humor, Funny, Irony, good example, maturity, above it, Goodness, Ethics, morals, upright, Good Person, humanity
“Let us endeavor so to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.”
— Mark Twain, Pudd'nhead Wilson
Tagged: live, live life to the fullest, full life, Death, Energy, Self-awareness, Being, alive, Life, human, humanity
“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!”
— Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger
Tagged: self, Self-awareness, Being, creature, Body, Reality, Dream, Imagination, Dreams, Spiritual, physical, Existence, God
“Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't.”
— Mark Twain, Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World
Tagged: fiction, Truth, strange, stranger than fiction, Possibility, possibilities, Life, Reality, Realism, Logic, Science, fact
“I have made it a rule never to smoke more than one cigar at a time. I have no other restriction as regards smoking.”
— Mark Twain, The Autobiography of Mark Twain
Tagged: cigar, smoking, humor, Irony, Sarcasm, rule, Law, Life, Vices, Vice
“I know all about audiences, they believe everything you say, except when you are telling the truth.”
— Mark Twain, The Autobiography of Mark Twain
Tagged: Truth, audience, Crowd, humanity, dumb, Irony, idiocy, idiots, Fools, stupidity, normalcy, group mentality, follow, leaders
“You don’t know about me, without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, but that ain’t no matter. That book was made by a Mr Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly.”
— Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Amazon Classics Edition)
Tagged: first lines of books
“Never allow someone to be your priority while allowing yourself to be their option.”
— Mark Twain, 7 Inspirational Mark Twain Quotes
Tagged: Human Condition
“They spell it "Vinci" and pronounce it "Vinchy". Foreigners always spell better than they pronounce.”
— Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad
“Truth is stranger than fiction — to some people, but I am measurably familiar with it.”
— Mark Twain, Following the Equator: A journey around the world
“There are those who scoff at the schoolboy, calling him frivolous and shallow: Yet it was the schoolboy who said "Faith is believing what you know ain't so."”
— Mark Twain, Following the Equator: A journey around the world
“I must have a prodigious quantity of mind; it takes me as much as a week sometimes to make it up.”
— Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad
“Huck was always willing to take a hand in any enterprise that offered entertainment and required no capital, for he had a troublesome super-abundance of that sort of time which is not money.”
— Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
Tagged: Wisdom, Youth, Childhood, Capitalism, Value, Time, time over money, Worth, Experiences, Entertainment, Life, enterprise, entrepreneur, rags to riches, Wealth
“One must travel, to learn. Every day, now, old Scriptural phrases that never possessed any significance for me before, take to themselves a meaning.”
— Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad
Tagged: Wisdom, wholesome, Views, Men, humanity, Value, Experiences, travel, Learning, Growing Up, different, exchange, abroad, Culture, expanding, expand the mind, Acceptance, improve yourself, Self-awareness, inclusiveness, international, Meaning
“Now and then we had a hope that if we lived and were good, God would permit us to be pirates.”
— Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi
Tagged: God, Religion, pirates, Becoming, Childhood, Imagination, play, boys, Youth
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