Mark Twain Quotes

A gifted person ought to learn English (barring spelling and pronouncing) in thirty hours, French in thirty days, and German in thirty years.

Mark Twain

• English
• German

• Previous
• Next

Quotes to Explore

• Do I not destroy my enemies when I make them my friends?

  

  Abraham Lincoln
  • Friends
  • Friendship
  • Destroy

• In America, people think being South Asian is still kind of exotic. When you go outside New York and Chicago and L.A., there are people who have never tried Indian food... they've never even tasted it!

  

  Aasif Mandvi
  • People
  • America
  • Food

• People should know what they want, not just what they don't want.

  

  Abdolkarim Soroush
  • People
  • Want
  • Know

• I think the best president - because he changed the whole mood of the country, the whole economy of the country, and stood up to Communism... that was continuing its causes around the world, and backed them off and caused them to collapse - and that was Ronald Reagan.

  

  Pat Boone
  • Up
  • World
  • Country

• I started wearing all black around the time I got into Nirvana. I first heard 'Smells Like Teen Spirit' when I was about 12, and I remember jumping on my bed, so excited about it.

  

  Natasha Lyonne
  • Time
  • Remember
  • Black

• Denial of childhood and denial of freedom are the biggest sins which humankind has been committing and perpetuating for ages.

  

  Kailash Satyarthi
  • Freedom
  • Childhood
  • Denial

• I've always loved writing, and the impulse for me is storytelling. I don't sit down and think: 'What political message can I sell?' I love the creativity of it.

  

  Randa Abdel-Fattah
  • Writing
  • Love
  • Political

• When human beings live together, conflict is inevitable. War is not.

  

  Daisaku Ikeda
  • Live
  • War
  • Together

• I sometimes look around that studio in the middle of commercials and think, 'Really?'

  

  Candy Crowley
  • Think
  • Sometimes
  • Look

• We who were born were not witnesses to our birth: like death, it is something we are forever after trying to catch sight of.

  

  Rachel Cusk
  • Trying
  • Death
  • Forever

• I miss my family and friends from Cali a lot. I also miss late-night business hours, hiking in the Sierra Nevada, and house boating in Gold Country. But in Ohio, housing is cheaper, everything is green year-round, and we get glorious thunderstorms. In California, I lived in a place that was infested with black widow spiders.

  

  Rae Carson
  • Country
  • Family
  • Business

• My first-ever car, my parents bought me a red Fiat Uno. I was 17 and just so happy to have a car, so I was very fortunate that my parents were in a position to get me one - it was a secondhand car, but I was just so happy to have it.

  

  Victoria Beckham Spice Girls
  • Happy
  • Parents
  • Car

• Kids in urban and rural areas face so many challenges, and they show up at schools that don't have the extra capacity or extra resources to meet their needs.

  

  Wendy Kopp
  • Up
  • Kids
  • Challenges

• The culinary tradition in my family is very strong. My mother, a very wise woman, spent the better part of her life in a kitchen. It's a very strong part of her identity. I grew up there next to the fire.

  

  Laura Esquivel
  • Life
  • Up
  • Family

• I really feel like I honed in on a sound and a style of writing that best fits me.

  

  Sam Hunt
  • Writing
  • Style
  • Best

• Medical decisions have been politicized. What doctor wants a state legislator in his consulting room?

  

  Garry Trudeau
  • Decisions
  • Medical
  • Doctor

• About 70 percent of the district was new. It was a short amount of time to get to know hundreds and thousands of people. But with the help and support of old friends, we built a grassroots operation organically from the ground up.

  

  Adam Kinzinger
  • People
  • Up
  • Time

• I was raised in the '70s, and I've worked with people I love, and I've been on sets with my parents, with people who run a set and require of actors a sense of liberty and freedom and exploration and failure into brave achievement.

  

  Laura Dern
  • People
  • Parents
  • Freedom

• I want to show that the underdog can win. I believe we're all the same: you, a slum girl, my mother.

  

  Vikas Swarup
  • Believe
  • Mother
  • Girl

• I have only so many foreign-language neurons. When I learned Spanish, that displaced whatever Irish was left, and then I learned German, and that displaced the Spanish, and when I learned Serbo-Croatian, that displaced the German. So I'm a bit of a muddle.

  

  Samantha Power
  • Learned
  • Irish
  • German

• One naturally wonders if the problem of translation could conceivably be treated as a problem in cryptography. When I look at an article in Russian, I say: 'This is really written in English, but it has been coded in some strange symbols. I will now proceed to decode.'

  

  Warren Weaver
  • English

• Once you understand this way, you will be able to make your room alive; you will be able to design a house together with your family; a garden for your children; places where you can work; beautiful terraces where you can sit and dream.

  

  Christopher Alexander
  • Work
  • Children
  • Family

• An all-rounder is someone who can make it to the team purely on the basis of his batting or bowling. Not both.

  

  Garfield Sobers
  • Team

• A gifted person ought to learn English (barring spelling and pronouncing) in thirty hours, French in thirty days, and German in thirty years.

  

  Mark Twain
  • English
  • German