Mark Twain Quotes
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Biographies are but the clothes and buttons of the man. The biography of the man himself cannot be written.
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Customs do not concern themselves with right or wrong or reason. But they have to be obeyed; one reasons all around them until he is tired, but he must not transgress them, it is sternly forbidden.
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To create man was a fine and original idea; but to add the sheep was a tautology.
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We are all alike, on the inside.
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It is not worth while to try to keep history from repeating itself, for man's character will always make the preventing of the repetitions impossible.
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In the cotton States, after the war...the Jew came down in force, set up shop on the plantation, supplied all the negro's wants on credit, and at the end of the season was proprietor of the negro's share of the present crop and of part of his share of the next one. Before long, the whites detested the Jew, and it is doubtful if the negro loved him.
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Substitute 'damn' every time you're inclined to write 'very'; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.
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There are basically two types of people. People who accomplish things, and people who claim to have accomplished things. The first group is less crowded.
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Wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been.
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Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see.
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I can live for two months on a good compliment.
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It is better to deserve honors and not have them than to have them and not deserve them.
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It put our energies to sleep and made visionaries of us - dreamers and indolent... It is good to begin life poor; it is good to begin life rich - these are wholesome; but to begin it prospectively rich! The man who has not experienced it cannot imagine the curse of it.
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We are always anxious to be distinguished for a talent which we do not possess than to be praised for the fifteen which we do possess.
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Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear.
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To string incongruities and absurdities together in a wandering and sometimes purposeless way, and seem innocently unaware that they are absurdities, is the basis of the American art, if my position is correct.
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Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.BY ORDER OF THE AUTHOR.
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What is the difference between a taxidermist and a tax collector? The taxidermist takes only your skin.
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...it seems to be a law of the human constitution that those that deserve shall not have, and those that do not deserve shall get everything that is worth having. It is a sufficiently crazy arrangement, it seems to me.
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...when you recollect something which belonged in an earlier chapter, do not go back, but jam it in where you are. Discursiveness does not hurt an autobiography in the least.
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Before taking final leave of me, my instructor inquired concerning my physical strength, and I was able to inform him that I hadn't any.
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Only kings, presidents, editors, and people with tapeworms have the right to use the editorial 'we.'
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I came in with Halley's Comet in 1835. It is coming again next year, and I expect to go out with it. It will be the greatest disappointment of my life if I don't go out with Halley's Comet. The Almighty has said, no doubt: 'Now here are these two unaccountable freaks; they came in together, they must go out together.'
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You don't know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain't no matter. That book was made by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly. There was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth.