Mark Twain Quotes

Mark Twain's candid witticisms & profound insights about human nature are a joy to read. He used humor, irreverence, and satire to both entertain and to convey truth.

"When I first began to lecture, and in my earlier writings, my sole idea was to make comic capital out of everything I saw and heard."

There are many online compilations of quotes by  Mark Twain. Here's a compilation of my favorites -

Authority

• "Always respect your superiors; if you have any."

Anger

• “When angry, count four. When very angry, swear.”
• “Under certain circumstances, profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer."

Arguing

• “Never argue with a fool, onlookers may not be able to tell the difference.”

Books

• “The man who does not read has no advantage over the man who cannot read.”
• “Those who don't read good books have no advantage over those who can't.”
• “′Classic′ - a book which people praise and don't read.”
• “A successful book is not made of what is in it, but what is left out of it.”
• “A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.”
• “Choosing not to read is like closing an open door to paradise”

Country

• "Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it." 
• "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."
• “Loyalty to country ALWAYS. Loyalty to government, when it deserves it.”
• "Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason."

Courage 

• "Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear... not the absence of it.” 

Death

• “I take my only exercise acting as a pallbearer at the funerals of my friends who exercise regularly.”
• “Get a bicycle. You will not regret it, if you live.”

Dogs

• “Heaven goes by favor. If it went by merit, you would stay out and your dog would go in.”
• “The more I learn about people, the more I like my dog.”
• “The dog is a gentleman; I hope to go to his heaven not man's.”

Education

• “Education: the path from cocky ignorance to miserable uncertainty.”
• “Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond; cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education.”
• “Education: that which reveals to the wise, and conceals from the stupid, the vast limits of their knowledge.”
• “Every time you stop a school, you will have to build a jail. What you gain at one end you lose at the other. It's like feeding a dog on his own tail. It won't fatten the dog.”

Food

• "To eat is human…to digest‚ divine."
• “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.”

God

• “In the first place God made idiots. This was for practice. Then he made school boards.”
• “What is Man? Man is a noisome bacillus whom Our Heavenly Father created because he was disappointed in the monkey.”

Giving up

• “Giving up smoking is the easiest thing in the world. I know because I’ve done it thousands of times.” 

Happiness

• “Sanity and happiness are an impossible combination.”
• “Comparison is the death of joy.”

Hell 

• “I don't like to commit myself about Heaven and Hell, you see, I have friends in both places.”

Humans

• “Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.”
• “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.”
• "If everybody was satisfied with himself, there would be no heroes.”
• “When people do not respect us we are sharply offended; yet deep down in his private heart no man much respects himself.”
• “Nothing so needs reforming as other people's habits.”
• “The average man doesn't like trouble and danger.”

Human Nature

• "If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you; that is the principal difference between a dog and a man."
• "Never argue with stupid people, they will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience"
• “When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained.”
• “There are many humorous things in the world; among them, the white man's notion that he is less savage than the other savages.”
• “Civilization is a limitless multiplication of unnecessary necessities.” 
• “The fact that man knows right from wrong proves his intellectual superiority to the other creatures; but the fact that he can do wrong proves his moral inferiority to any creatures that cannot.”
• “Familiarity breeds contempt and children.”
• “To do good is noble. To tell others to do good is even nobler and much less trouble.”
• “Habit is habit, and not to be flung out of the window by any man, but coaxed down-stairs one step at a time.”
• “To a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail.”
• “The trouble ain't that there is too many fools, but that the lightning ain't distributed right.”

Humor

• “The secret source of humor is not joy but sorrow; there is no humor in heaven.”
• “Explaining humor is a lot like dissecting a frog, you learn a lot in the process, but in the end you kill it.”

Ideas

• “There is no such thing as a new idea. It is impossible. We simply take a lot of old ideas and put them into a sort of mental kaleidoscope. We give them a turn and they make new and curious combinations. We keep on turning and making new combinations indefinitely; but they are the same old pieces of colored glass that have been in use through all the ages.”

Lies

• “One of the most striking differences between a cat and a lie is that a cat has only nine lives.”

Life

• “The secret to getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex overwhelming tasks into small manageable tasks, and starting on the first one.” 
• "Be good and you will be lonesome."
• "Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest."
• "Do your duty today and repent tomorrow."
• “Good friends, good books, and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.”
• "Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see.” 
• “The worst loneliness is to not be comfortable with yourself.”
• “All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence; then success is sure. ”
• “To get the full value of joy you must have someone to divide it with.”
•  “The best way to cheer yourself up is to cheer somebody else up.” 
• “Good judgment is the result of experience and experience the result of bad judgment.”
• “Work like you don't need the money. Dance like no one is watching. And love like you've never been hurt.”
•  “Whoever is happy will make others happy too.”
• “The secret of success is making your vocation your vacation.”
• “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.”
• “Life would be infinitely happier if we could only be born at the age of eighty and gradually approach eighteen.”
• “Any emotion, if it is sincere, is involuntary.”
• “Reality can be beaten with enough imagination.”
• "It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than open it and remove all doubt"
• “I’ve had thousands of problems in my life, most of which never actually happened.”
• “Life does not consist mainly, or even largely, of facts or happenings. It consist mainly of the storm of thoughts that is forever flowing through one's head.”
• “Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.”
• “Necessity is the mother of taking chances.”

Love 

• “Love is not a product of reasonings and statistics. It just comes-none knows whence-and cannot explain itself.”

Luck

• “When ill luck begins, it does not come in sprinkles, but in showers.”

Marriage

• "No man or woman really knows what perfect love is until they have been married a quarter of a century.”

Mind

• “Out of all the things I have lost, I miss my mind the most.”

Money

• "The lack of money is the root of all evil."
• "Prosperity is the best protector of principle."
• "Honesty is the best policy - when there is money in it"

Music 

• “A gentleman is someone who knows how to play the banjo and doesn't.”

News

• "If you don't read the newspaper, you're uninformed. If you read the newspaper, you're mis-informed.”

Opportunity

• "I was seldom able to see an opportunity until it had ceased to be one."

Parents

• "Always obey your parents when they are present." 
• “When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.”

Politics

• "Why waste your money looking up your family tree? Just go into politics and your opponents will do it for you." 

Reality

• “The only difference between reality and fiction is that fiction needs to be credible.”

Religion

• “Religion was invented when the first con man met the first fool.”
• “The so-called Christian nations are the most enlightened and progressive ... but in spite of their religion, not because of it. The Church has opposed every innovation and discovery from the day of Galileo down to our own time, when the use of anesthetic in childbirth was regarded as a sin because it avoided the biblical curse pronounced against Eve. And every step in astronomy and geology ever taken has been opposed by bigotry and superstition. The Greeks surpassed us in artistic culture and in architecture five hundred years before Christian religion was born.”
• “It ain't the parts of the Bible that I can't understand that bother me, it's the parts that I do understand.”
• “Man is a Religious Animal. He is the only Religious Animal. He is the only animal that has the True Religion--several of them. He is the only animal that loves his neighbor as himself and cuts his throat if his theology isn't straight. He has made a graveyard of the globe in trying his honest best to smooth his brother's path to happiness and heaven....The higher animals have no religion. And we are told that they are going to be left out in the Hereafter. I wonder why? It seems questionable taste.”

Self-realization

• “I can last two months on a good compliment.”

Silence

• “The right word may be effective, but no word was ever as effective as a rightly timed pause.”

Statistics

• “Facts are stubborn things, but statistics are pliable.”

Tax

• “The only difference between a tax man and a taxidermist is that the taxidermist leaves the skin.”

Time

• “Never put off till tomorrow what may be done day after tomorrow just as well.”
• “I didn't have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.”
• “It usually takes me two or three days to prepare an impromptu speech.”
• “December is the toughest month of the year. Others are July, January, September, April, November, May, March, June, October, August, and February.”
• “October: This is one of the peculiarly dangerous months to speculate in stocks. The others are July, January, September, April, November, May, March, June, December, August and February.”

Tips

• “Write without pay until somebody offers to pay.”
• “A man's character may be learned from the adjectives which he habitually uses in conversation.”
• “Never be haughty to the humble, never be humble to the haughty.”
• “Give every day the chance to become the most beautiful day of your life.”

Travel 

• "Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness."

Truth

• "Never tell the truth to people who are not worthy of it."
• "When in doubt‚ tell the truth."
• "A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes."
• "If you tell truth you don’t have to remember anything."
• "Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; truth isn't,"
• “Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please.” 
• “A clear conscience is a sign of a bad memory.” 
• “A half-truth is the most cowardly of lies.”
• “Never let the truth get in the way of a good story.”

Women

• “There are three things men can do with women: love them, suffer them, or turn them into literature.”

Worrying 

• “Worrying is like paying a debt you don't owe.”

Writing

• “Writing is easy. All you have to do is cross out the wrong words.”
• “One should never use exclamation points in writing. It is like laughing at your own joke.”

work in progress...