Mark Twain: Quotes

• Anger

  When angry, count four; when very angry, swear.Mark Twain: Pudd'nhead Wilson

• Books and Reading

  “Classic”: A book which people praise and don't read.Mark Twain: Following the Equator

• Character and Personality

  Everyone is a moon, and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody.Mark Twain: Following the Equator

• Children and Childhood

  A baby is an inestimable blessing and bother.Mark Twain

• Courage

  Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear—not absence of fear.Mark Twain: Pudd'nhead Wilson

• Death

  The report of my death was an exaggeration.Mark Twain

• Example

  Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example.Mark Twain: Pudd'nhead Wilson

• Experience

  We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it—and stop there; lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot stove lid. She will never sit down on a hot stove lid again—and that is well; but also she will never sit down on a cold one anymore.Mark Twain: Following the Equator

• Facts

  Facts, or what a man believes to be facts, are always delightful. . . . Get your facts first, and . . . then you can distort 'em as much as you please.Mark Twain

• Familiarity

  Familiarity breeds contempt—and children.Mark Twain: Notebooks

• Fools and Foolishness

  Let us be thankful for the fools. But for them the rest of us could not succeed.Mark Twain: Following the Equator

• Foreigners and Foreignness

  They spell it Vinci and pronounce it Vinchy; foreigners always spell better than they pronounce.Mark Twain: Innocents Abroad

• Freedom and Liberty

  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

• Friends and Friendship

  The holy passion of Friendship is of so sweet and steady and loyal and enduring a nature that it will last through a whole lifetime, if not asked to lend money.Mark Twain: Pudd'nhead Wilson

• Goodness

  To be good is noble; but to show others how to be good is nobler and no trouble.Mark Twain: Following the Equator

• Gratitude

  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 a man.Mark Twain: Pudd'nhead Wilson

• Habit

  Habit is habit, and not to be flung out of the window by any man, but coaxed downstairs a step at a time.Mark Twain: Pudd'nhead Wilson

• Holidays

  April 1. This is the day upon which we are reminded of what we are on the other three hundred and sixty-four.Mark Twain: Pudd'nhead Wilson

• Humor and Wit

  The secret source of Humor itself is not joy but sorrow. There is no humor in heaven.Mark Twain: Following the Equator

• Illusion

  Don't part with your illusions. When they are gone, you may still exist, but you have ceased to live.Mark Twain: Pudd'nhead Wilson

• Invention and Discovery

  Name the greatest of all the inventors: Accident.Mark Twain: Notebooks

• Language

  The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter—'tis the difference between the lightning-bug and the lightning.Mark Twain

• Leaders and Rulers

  All kings is mostly rapscallions.Mark Twain: Huckleberry Finn

• Loss

  A coin, sleeve-button or a collar-button dropped in a bedroom will hide itself and be hard to find. A handkerchief in bed can't be found.Mark Twain: Notebooks

• Lying and Liars

  One of the most striking differences between a cat and a lie is that a cat has only nine lives.Mark Twain: Pudd'nhead Wilson

• Majorities

  Hain't we got all the fools in town on our side? And ain't that a big enough majority in any town?Mark Twain: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

• Manners

  Good breeding consists in concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of the other person.Mark Twain: Notebooks

• Money

  There are two times in a man's life when he should not speculate: when he can't afford it, and when he can.Mark Twain: Following the Equator

• Opinion

  It were not best that we should all think alike; it is difference of opinion that makes horse races.Mark Twain: Pudd'nhead Wilson

• Order and Efficiency

  Have a place for everything and keep the thing somewhere else. This is not advice, it is merely custom.Mark Twain: Notebooks

• Originality

  What a good thing Adam had. When he said a good thing he knew nobody had said it before.Mark Twain: Notebooks

• Prudence and Foresight

  Put all your eggs in the one basket and—WATCH THAT BASKET.Mark Twain: Pudd'nhead Wilson

• Reform and Reformers

  Nothing so needs reforming as other people's habits.Mark Twain: Pudd'nhead Wilson

• Shame

  Man is the only animal that blushes. Or needs to.Mark Twain: Following the Equator

• Statistics

  . . . the remark attributed to Disraeli . . . : “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.”Mark Twain: Autobiography

• Temptation

  There are several good protections against temptations, but the surest is cowardice.Mark Twain: Following the Equator

• The Forbidden

  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

• Virtue

  Always do right. This will gratify some people, and astonish the rest.Mark Twain

• Weather

  There is a sumptuous variety about the New England weather that compels the stranger's admiration—and regret. The weather is always doing something there; always attending strictly to business; always getting up new designs and trying them on people to see how they will go. But it gets through more business in spring than in any other season. In the spring I have counted one hundred and thirty-six different kinds of weather inside of twenty-four hours.Mark Twain