Mark Twain
A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.
Mark TwainA man cannot be comfortable without his own approval.
Mark TwainA man is never more truthful than when he acknowledges himself a liar.
Mark TwainA man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way.
Mark TwainA man's character may be learned from the adjectives which he habitually uses in conversation.
Mark TwainA person who won't read has no advantage over one who can't read.
Mark TwainA person with a new idea is a crank until the idea succeeds.
Mark TwainA round man cannot be expected to fit in a square hole right away. He must have time to modify his shape.
Mark TwainAction speaks louder than words but not nearly as often.
Mark TwainAdvertisements contain the only truths to be relied on in a newspaper.
Mark TwainAgainst the assault of laughter nothing can stand.
Mark TwainAge is an issue of mind over matter. If you don't mind, it doesn't matter.
Mark TwainAll generalizations are false, including this one.
Mark TwainAll right, then, I'll go to hell.
Mark TwainAll you need is ignorance and confidence and the success is sure.
Mark TwainAlways do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest.
Mark TwainAnger 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 TwainAny emotion, if it is sincere, is involuntary.
Mark TwainApparently there is nothing that cannot happen today.
Mark TwainAs an example to others, and not that I care for moderation myself, it has always been my rule never to smoke when asleep, and never to refrain from smoking when awake.
Mark TwainBe careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint.
Mark TwainBe careless in your dress if you will, but keep a tidy soul.
Mark TwainBetter a broken promise than none at all.
Mark TwainBiographies are but the clothes and buttons of the man. The biography of the man himself cannot be written.
Mark TwainBut who prays for Satan? Who, in eighteen centuries, has had the common humanity to pray for the one sinner that needed it most?
Mark TwainBuy land, they're not making it anymore.
Mark TwainBy trying we can easily endure adversity. Another man's, I mean.
Mark TwainCauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education.
Mark TwainCivilization is the limitless multiplication of unnecessary necessities.
Mark Twain‘Classic.' A book which people praise and don't read.
Mark TwainClimate is what we expect, weather is what we get.
Mark TwainClothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.
Mark TwainCourage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear.
Mark TwainDenial ain't just a river in Egypt.
Mark TwainDo the right thing. It will gratify some people and astonish the rest.
Mark TwainDo the thing you fear most and the death of fear is certain.
Mark TwainDon't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.
Mark TwainDon't let schooling interfere with your education.
Mark TwainDon't part with your illusions. When they are gone, you may still exist, but you have ceased to live.
Mark TwainDon't say the old lady screamed. Bring her on and let her scream.
Mark TwainDon't tell fish stories where the people know you; but particularly, don't tell them where they know the fish.
Mark TwainDrag your thoughts away from your troubles… by the ears, by the heels, or any other way you can manage it.
Mark TwainEducation consists mainly of what we have unlearned.
Mark TwainEverything has its limit – iron ore cannot be educated into gold.
Mark TwainEverything human is pathetic. The secret source of humor itself is not joy but sorrow. There is no humor in heaven.
Mark TwainFacts are stubborn, but statistics are more pliable.
Mark TwainFamiliarity breeds contempt – and children.
Mark TwainFew things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example.
Mark TwainFiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn't.
Mark TwainForgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.
Mark TwainGeorge Washington, as a boy, was ignorant of the commonest accomplishments of youth. He could not even lie.
Mark TwainGet your facts first, then you can distort them as you please.
Mark TwainGiving up smoking is the easiest thing in the world. I know because I've done it thousands of times.
Mark TwainGo to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company.
Mark TwainGod made the Idiot for practice, and then He made the School Board.
Mark TwainGolf is a good walk spoiled.
Mark TwainGood breeding consists in concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of the other person.
Mark TwainGood friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.
Mark TwainGrief can take care if itself, but to get the full value of a joy you must have somebody to divide it with.
Mark TwainHe is now rising from affluence to poverty.
Mark TwainHonesty is the best policy – when there is money in it.
Mark TwainHumor is mankind's greatest blessing.
Mark TwainHumor must not professedly teach and it must not professedly preach, but it must do both if it would live forever.
Mark TwainI am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened.
Mark TwainI can live for two months on a good compliment.
Mark TwainI didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it.
Mark TwainI don't give a damn for a man that can only spell a word one way.
Mark TwainI don't like to commit myself about heaven and hell – you see, I have friends in both places.
Mark TwainI have been complimented many times and they always embarrass me; I always feel that they have not said enough.
Mark TwainI have made it a rule never to smoke more that one cigar at a time.
Mark TwainI have never let my schooling interfere with my education.
Mark TwainI have never taken any exercise except sleeping and resting.
Mark TwainI make it a rule never to smoke while I'm sleeping.
Mark TwainI must have a prodigious quantity of mind; it takes me as much as a week sometimes to make it up.
Mark TwainI never let schooling interfere with my education.
Mark TwainI was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did. I said I didn't know.
Mark TwainI was seldom able to see an opportunity until it had ceased to be one.
Mark TwainI've never let my school interfere with my education.
Mark TwainIdeally a book would have no order to it, and the reader would have to discover his own.
Mark TwainIf man could be crossed with the cat, it would improve man but deteriorate the cat.
Mark TwainIf you hold a cat by the tail you learn things you cannot learn any other way.
Mark TwainIf you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything.
Mark TwainIn the first place, God made idiots. That was for practice. Then he made school boards.
Mark TwainIn the Spring, I have counted 136 different kinds of weather inside of 24 hours.
Mark TwainIt ain't those parts of the Bible that I can't understand that bother me, it is the parts that I do understand.
Mark TwainIt ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so.
Mark TwainIt could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native criminal class except Congress.
Mark TwainIt is better to deserve honors and not have them than to have them and not deserve them.
Mark TwainIt is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.
Mark TwainIt is better to take what does not belong to you than to let it lie around neglected.
Mark TwainIt 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 TwainIt is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare.
Mark TwainIt is easier to stay out than get out.
Mark TwainIt is just like man's vanity and impertinence to call an animal dumb because it is dumb to his dull perceptions.
Mark TwainIt is not best that we should all think alike; it is a difference of opinion that makes horse races.
Mark TwainIt usually takes me more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech.
Mark TwainIt was wonderful to find America, but it would have been more wonderful to miss it.
Mark TwainIt's good sportsmanship to not pick up lost golf balls while they are still rolling.
Mark TwainIt's no wonder that truth is stranger than fiction. Fiction has to make sense.
Mark TwainIt's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog.
Mark TwainKindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see.
Mark TwainLaws control the lesser man… Right conduct controls the greater one.
Mark TwainLet us live so that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.
Mark TwainLet us make a special effort to stop communicating with each other, so we can have some conversation.
Mark TwainLet us not be too particular; it is better to have old secondhand diamonds than none at all.
Mark TwainLife would be infinitely happier if we could only be born at the age of eighty and gradually approach eighteen.
Mark TwainLord save us all from a hope tree that has lost the faculty of putting out blossoms.
Mark TwainLoyalty to petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul.
Mark TwainLoyalty to the country always. Loyalty to the government when it deserves it.
Mark TwainMan – a creature made at the end of the week's work when God was tired.
Mark TwainMan is the only animal that blushes – or needs to.
Mark TwainMan was made at the end of the week's work when God was tired.
Mark TwainMan will do many things to get himself loved, he will do all things to get himself envied.
Mark TwainMany a small thing has been made large by the right kind of advertising.
Mark TwainMartyrdom covers a multitude of sins.
Mark TwainMy books are like water; those of the great geniuses are wine. (Fortunately) everybody drinks water.
Mark TwainMy mother had a great deal of trouble with me, but I think she enjoyed it.
Mark TwainName the greatest of all inventors. Accident.
Mark TwainNecessity is the mother of taking chances.
Mark TwainNever put off till tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow.
Mark TwainNo sinner is ever saved after the first twenty minutes of a sermon.
Mark TwainNoise proves nothing. Often a hen who has merely laid an egg cackles as if she laid an asteroid.
Mark TwainNothing so needs reforming as other people's habits.
Mark TwainOften it does seem a pity that Noah and his party did not miss the boat.
Mark TwainOne of the most striking differences between a cat and a lie is that a cat has only nine lives.
Mark TwainOnly kings, presidents, editors, and people with tapeworms have the right to use the editorial “we.”
Mark TwainOnly one thing is impossible for God: To find any sense in any copyright law on the planet.
Mark TwainPart of the secret of a success in life is to eat what you like and let the food fight it out inside.
Mark TwainPatriot: the person who can holler the loudest without knowing what he is hollering about.
Mark TwainPatriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it.
Mark TwainPrinciples have no real force except when one is well-fed.
Mark TwainProphesy is a good line of business, but it is full of risks.
Mark TwainProsperity is the best protector of principle.
Mark TwainReader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.
Mark TwainRepartee is something we think of twenty-four hours too late.
Mark TwainSoap and education are not as sudden as a massacre, but they are more deadly in the long run.
Mark TwainSometimes too much to drink is barely enough.
Mark TwainSubstitute “damn” every time you're inclined to write “very”; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.
Mark TwainSuch is the human race, often it seems a pity that Noah… didn't miss the boat.
Mark TwainSuppose you were an idiot, and suppose you were a member of Congress; but I repeat myself.
Mark TwainThe best way to cheer yourself up is to try to cheer somebody else up.
Mark TwainThe Christian's Bible is a drug store. Its contents remain the same, but the medical practice changes.
Mark TwainThe difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.
Mark TwainThe educated Southerner has no use for an ‘R', except at the beginning of a word.
Mark TwainThe fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.
Mark TwainThe first of April is the day we remember what we are the other 364 days of the year.
Mark TwainThe human race has one really effective weapon, and that is laughter.
Mark TwainThe human race is a race of cowards; and I am not only marching in that procession but carrying a banner.
Mark TwainThe lack of money is the root of all evil.
Mark TwainThe main difference between a cat and a lie is that a cat only has nine lives.
Mark TwainThe man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them.
Mark TwainThe man who is a pessimist before 48 knows too much; if he is an optimist after it, he knows too little.
Mark TwainThe more things are forbidden, the more popular they become.
Mark TwainThe more you explain it, the more I don't understand it.
Mark TwainThe most interesting information comes from children, for they tell all they know and then stop.
Mark TwainThe 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.
Mark TwainThe Public is merely a multiplied “me.”
Mark TwainThe public is the only critic whose opinion is worth anything at all.
Mark TwainThe reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.
Mark TwainThe right word may be effective, but no word was ever as effective as a rightly timed pause.
Mark TwainThe rule is perfect: in all matters of opinion our adversaries are insane.
Mark TwainThe secret source of humor is not joy but sorrow; there is no humor in Heaven.
Mark TwainThe trouble ain't that there is too many fools, but that the lightning ain't distributed right.
Mark TwainThe very ink with which history is written is merely fluid prejudice.
Mark TwainThe wit knows that his place is at the tail of a procession.
Mark TwainThere are basically two types of people. People who accomplish things, and people who claim to have accomplished things. The first group is less crowded.
Mark TwainThere are lies, damned lies and statistics.
Mark TwainThere are people who can do all fine and heroic things but one – keep from telling their happiness to the unhappy.
Mark TwainThere are several good protections against temptation, but the surest is cowardice.
Mark TwainThere are times when one would like to hang the whole human race, and finish the farce.
Mark TwainThere is a charm about the forbidden that makes it unspeakably desirable.
Mark TwainThere is no distinctly American criminal class – except Congress.
Mark TwainThere is no sadder sight than a young pessimist.
Mark TwainThousands of geniuses live and die undiscovered – either by themselves or by others.
Mark TwainThunder is good, thunder is impressive; but it is lightning that does the work.
Mark TwainTo be good is noble; but to show others how to be good is nobler and no trouble.
Mark TwainTo refuse awards is another way of accepting them with more noise than is normal.
Mark TwainTo succeed in life, you need two things: ignorance and confidence.
Mark TwainTruth is mighty and will prevail. There is nothing wrong with this, except that it ain't so.
Mark TwainTruth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't.
Mark TwainTruth is the most valuable thing we have. Let us economize it.
Mark TwainUnder certain circumstances, profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer.
Mark TwainWater, taken in moderation, cannot hurt anybody.
Mark TwainWe Americans… bear the ark of liberties of the world.
Mark TwainWe are all alike, on the inside.
Mark TwainWe have the best government that money can buy.
Mark TwainWhat a good thing Adam had. When he said a good thing he knew nobody had said it before.
Mark TwainWhat a wee little part of a person's life are his acts and his words! His real life is led in his head, and is known to none but himself.
Mark TwainWhat is the difference between a taxidermist and a tax collector? The taxidermist takes only your skin.
Mark TwainWhat would men be without women? Scarce, sir, mighty scarce.
Mark TwainWhat, sir, would the people of the earth be without woman? They would be scarce, sir, almighty scarce.
Mark TwainWhen a person cannot deceive himself the chances are against his being able to deceive other people.
Mark TwainWhen angry, count to four; when very angry, swear.
Mark TwainWhen I was younger I could remember anything, whether it happened or not.
Mark TwainWhen in doubt tell the truth.
Mark TwainWhen people do not respect us we are sharply offended; yet in his private heart no man much respects himself.
Mark TwainWhen red-haired people are above a certain social grade their hair is auburn.
Mark TwainWhen we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained.
Mark TwainWhen you fish for love, bait with your heart, not your brain.
Mark TwainWhen your friends begin to flatter you on how young you look, it's a sure sign you're getting old.
Mark TwainWhenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.
Mark TwainWhy is it that we rejoice at a birth and grieve at a funeral? It is because we are not the person involved.
Mark TwainWhy shouldn't truth be stranger than fiction? Fiction, after all, has to make sense.
Mark TwainWit is the sudden marriage of ideas which before their union were not perceived to have any relation.
Mark TwainWords are only painted fire; a look is the fire itself.
Mark TwainWork consists of whatever a body is obliged to do. Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.
Mark TwainWork is a necessary evil to be avoided.
Mark TwainWrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been.
Mark TwainYou can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.
Mark Twain