Mark Twain Says..

• A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.


• A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval.


• A man is never more truthful than when he acknowledges himself a liar.


• A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way.


• A person who won't read has no advantage over one who can't read.


• A person with a new idea is a crank until the idea succeeds.


• A round man cannot be expected to fit in a square hole right away. He must have time to modify his shape.


• Action speaks louder than words but not nearly as often.


• Advertisements contain the only truths to be relied on in a newspaper.


• Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand.


• Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don't mind, it doesn't matter.


• All generalizations are false, including this one.


• All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence, and then success is sure.


• All you need is ignorance and confidence and the success is sure.


• Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest.


• 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.


• Apparently there is nothing that cannot happen today.


• Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint.


• Be careless in your dress if you will, but keep a tidy soul.


• Better a broken promise than none at all.


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


• By trying we can easily endure adversity. Another man's, I mean.


• Cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education.


• Civilization is the limitless multiplication of unnecessary necessities.


• 'Classic.' A book which people praise and don't read.


• Climate is what we expect, weather is what we get.


• Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.


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


• Deep down in me I knowed it was a lie, and He knowed it. You can't pray a lie - I found that out.


• Denial ain't just a river in Egypt.


• Do the right thing. It will gratify some people and astonish the rest.


• Do the thing you fear most and the death of fear is certain.


• Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.


• Don't let schooling interfere with your education.


• Don't part with your illusions. When they are gone, you may still exist, but you have ceased to live.


• Don't say the old lady screamed. Bring her on and let her scream.


• Don't tell fish stories where the people know you; but particularly, don't tell them where they know the fish.


• Drag your thoughts away from your troubles... by the ears, by the heels, or any other way you can manage it.


• Education consists mainly of what we have unlearned.


• Everything has its limit - iron ore cannot be educated into gold.


• Everything human is pathetic. The secret source of humor itself is not joy but sorrow. There is no humor in heaven.


• Facts are stubborn, but statistics are more pliable.


• Familiarity breeds contempt - and children.


• Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example.


• Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn't.


• Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heal that has crushed it.


• George Washington, as a boy, was ignorant of the commonest accomplishments of youth. He could not even lie.


• Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please.


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


• Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company.


• God made the Idiot for practice, and then He made the School Board.


• Going to law is losing a cow for the sake of a cat.


• Golf is a good walk spoiled.


• Good breeding consists in concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of the other person.


• Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.


• Grief can take care if itself, but to get the full value of a joy you must have somebody to divide it with.


• Have a place for everything and keep the thing somewhere else; this is not advice, it is merely custom.


• He is now rising from affluence to poverty.


• He is useless on top of the ground; he ought to be under it, inspiring the cabbages.


• Honesty is the best policy - when there is money in it.


• Humor is mankind's greatest blessing.


• I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened.


• I am opposed to millionaires, but it would be dangerous to offer me the position.


• I can live for two months on a good compliment.


• I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it.


• I don't give a damn for a man that can only spell a word one way.


• I don't like to commit myself about heaven and hell - you see, I have friends in both places.


• I have been complimented many times and they always embarrass me; I always feel that they have not said enough.


• I have made it a rule never to smoke more that one cigar at a time.


• I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.


• I have never taken any exercise except sleeping and resting.


• I make it a rule never to smoke while I'm sleeping.


• I must have a prodigious quantity of mind; it takes me as much as a week sometimes to make it up.


• I never let schooling interfere with my education.


• I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did. I said I didn't know.






• I've never let my school interfere with my education.






• Ideally a book would have no order to it, and the reader would have to discover his own.






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


• If you hold a cat by the tail you learn things you cannot learn any other way.


• If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything.


• In the first place, God made idiots. That was for practice. Then he made school boards.


• In the Spring, I have counted 136 different kinds of weather inside of 24 hours.


• It ain't those parts of the Bible that I can't understand that bother me, it is the parts that I do understand.


• It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so.


• It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native criminal class except Congress.


• It is better to deserve honors and not have them than to have them and not deserve them.


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


• It is better to take what does not belong to you than to let it lie around neglected.


• It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare.


• It is easier to stay out than get out.


• It is just like man's vanity and impertinence to call an animal dumb because it is dumb to his dull perceptions.


• It is not best that we should all think alike; it is a difference of opinion that makes horse races.


• It used to take me all vacation to grow a new hide in place of the one they flogged off me during school term.


• It usually takes me more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech.


• It was wonderful to find America, but it would have been more wonderful to miss it.


• It's good sportsmanship to not pick up lost golf balls while they are still rolling.


• It's no wonder that truth is stranger than fiction. Fiction has to make sense.


• It's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog.


• Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see.


• Laws control the lesser man... Right conduct controls the greater one.


• Let us live so that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.


• Let us make a special effort to stop communicating with each other, so we can have some conversation.


• Let us not be too particular; it is better to have old secondhand diamonds than none at all.


• Life would be infinitely happier if we could only be born at the age of eighty and gradually approach eighteen.


• Lord save us all from a hope tree that has lost the faculty of putting out blossoms.


• Loyalty to petrified opinion never broke a chain or freed a human soul.


• Loyalty to petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul.


• Loyalty to the country always. Loyalty to the government when it deserves it.


• Man - a creature made at the end of the week's work when God was tired.


• Man is the only animal that blushes - or needs to.


• Man was made at the end of the week's work when God was tired.


• Man will do many things to get himself loved, he will do all things to get himself envied.


• Many a small thing has been made large by the right kind of advertising.


• Martyrdom covers a multitude of sins.


• My books are like water; those of the great geniuses are wine. (Fortunately) everybody drinks water.


• My mother had a great deal of trouble with me, but I think she enjoyed it.


• Name the greatest of all inventors. Accident.


• Necessity is the mother of taking chances.


• Never put off till tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow.


• No sinner is ever saved after the first twenty minutes of a sermon.


• Noise proves nothing. Often a hen who has merely laid an egg cackles as if she laid an asteroid.


• Not until you become a stranger to yourself will you be able to make acquaintance with the Friend.


• Nothing so needs reforming as other people's habits.


• Often it does seem a pity that Noah and his party did not miss the boat.


• Once you've put one of his [Henry James] books down, you simply can't pick it up again.


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


• Only kings, presidents, editors, and people with tapeworms have the right to use the editorial "we."


• Only one thing is impossible for God: To find any sense in any copyright law on the planet.


• Part of the secret of a success in life is to eat what you like and let the food fight it out inside.


• Principles have no real force except when one is well-fed.


• Prophesy is a good line of business, but it is full of risks.


• Prosperity is the best protector of principle.


• Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.


• Repartee is something we think of twenty-four hours too late.


• Soap and education are not as sudden as a massacre, but they are more deadly in the long run.


• Sometimes too much to drink is barely enough.


• Such is the human race, often it seems a pity that Noah... didn't miss the boat.


• Suppose you were an idiot, and suppose you were a member of Congress; but I repeat myself.


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


• The Christian's Bible is a drug store. Its contents remain the same, but the medical practice changes.


• The educated Southerner has no use for an 'R', except at the beginning of a word.


• The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.


• The first of April is the day we remember what we are the other 364 days of the year.


• The human race has one really effective weapon, and that is laughter.


• The human race is a race of cowards; and I am not only marching in that procession but carrying a banner.


• The main difference between a cat and a lie is that a cat only has nine lives.


• The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them.


• The man who is a pessimist before 48 knows too much; if he is an optimist after it, he knows too little.


• The Public is merely a multiplied "me."


• The public is the only critic whose opinion is worth anything at all.


• The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.


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


• The rule is perfect: in all matters of opinion our adversaries are insane.


• The secret source of humor is not joy but sorrow; there is no humor in Heaven.


• The trouble ain't that there is too many fools, but that the lightning ain't distributed right.


• The very ink with which history is written is merely fluid prejudice.


• The wit knows that his place is at the tail of a procession.


• There are lies, damned lies and statistics.


• There are people who can do all fine and heroic things but one - keep from telling their happiness to the unhappy.


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


• There are times when one would like to hang the whole human race, and finish the farce.


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


• There is no distinctly American criminal class - except Congress.


• There is no sadder sight than a young pessimist.


• Thousands of geniuses live and die undiscovered - either by themselves or by others.


• Thunder is good, thunder is impressive; but it is lightning that does the work.


• To be good is noble; but to show others how to be good is nobler and no trouble.


• To refuse awards is another way of accepting them with more noise than is normal.


• To succeed in life, you need two things: ignorance and confidence.


• Truth is mighty and will prevail. There is nothing wrong with this, except that it ain't so.


• Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't.


• Truth is the most valuable thing we have. Let us economize it.


• Under certain circumstances, profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer.


• Water, taken in moderation, cannot hurt anybody.


• We Americans... bear the ark of liberties of the world.


• We are all alike, on the inside.


• What a good thing Adam had. When he said a good thing he knew nobody had said it before.


• What is the difference between a taxidermist and a tax collector? The taxidermist takes only your skin.


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


• When a person cannot deceive himself the chances are against his being able to deceive other people.


• When angry, count to four; when very angry, swear.


• When I was younger I could remember anything, whether it happened or not.


• When in doubt tell the truth.


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


• When your friends begin to flatter you on how young you look, it's a sure sign you're getting old.


• Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.


• Why is it that we rejoice at a birth and grieve at a funeral? It is because we are not the person involved.


• Why shouldn't truth be stranger than fiction? Fiction, after all, has to make sense.


• Wit is the sudden marriage of ideas which before their union were not perceived to have any relation.


• Words are only painted fire; a book is the fire itself.


• Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do. Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.


• Work is a necessary evil to be avoided.


• Wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been.


• You can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.