Twain, Mark
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Twain, Mark
I don t like to commit myself about heaven and hell -- you see, I have friends in both places.
Twain, Mark
Commitment
Duties are not performed for duty s sake, but because their neglect would make the man uncomfortable. A man performs but one duty --the duty of contenting his spirit, the duty of making himself agreeable to himself.
Twain, Mark
Duty
By law of periodical repetition, everything which has happened once must happen again and again -- and not capriciously, but at regular periods, and each thing in its own period, not another s and each obeying its own law.
Twain, Mark
Cycles
If to be interesting is to be uncommonplace, it is becoming a question, with me, if there are any commonplace people.
Twain, Mark
Commonplace
Beautiful credit! The foundation of modern society. Who shall say that this is not the golden age of mutual trust, of unlimited reliance upon human promises? That is a peculiar condition of society which enables a whole nation to instantly recognize point and meaning in the familiar newspaper anecdote, which puts into the mouth of a distinguished speculator in lands and mines this remark: -- I wasn t worth a cent two years ago, and now I owe two millions of dollars.
Twain, Mark
Credit
A crime persevered in a thousand centuries ceases to be a crime, and becomes a virtue. This is the law of custom, and custom supersedes all other forms of law.
Twain, Mark
Crime and Criminals
Often, the less there is to justify a traditional custom, the harder it is to get rid of it.
Twain, Mark
Custom
Denial ain t just a river in Egypt.
Twain, Mark
Denial
He is useless on top of the ground; he ought to be under it, inspiring the cabbages.
Twain, Mark
Futility
Do something every day that you don t want to do. This is the golden rule for acquiring the habit of doing your duty without pain.
Twain, Mark
Duty
The best way to cheer yourself up is to try to cheer somebody else up.
Twain, Mark
Cheerfulness
When you cannot get a compliment in any other way pay yourself one.
Twain, Mark
Compliments
There is nothing you can say in answer to a compliment. I have been complimented myself a great many times, and they always embarrass me --I always feel that they have not said enough.
Twain, Mark
Compliments
If you can t get a compliment any other way, pay yourself one.
Twain, Mark
Compliments
The human race is a race of cowards; and I am not only marching in that procession, but carrying a banner.
Twain, Mark
Coward and Cowardice
There are several good protections against temptation, but the surest is cowardice.
Twain, Mark
Coward and Cowardice
There comes a time in every rightly constructed boy s life when he has a raging desire to go somewhere and dig for hidden treasure.
Twain, Mark
Boys
He has been a doctor a year now and has had two patients, no, three, I think -- yes, it was three; I attended their funerals.
Twain, Mark
Doctors
I am a democrat only on principle, not by instinct -- nobody is that. Doubtless some people say they are, but this world is grievously given to lying.
Twain, Mark
Democracy
Sacred cows make the best hamburger.
Twain, Mark
Customers
In the real world, nothing happens at the right place at the right time. It is the job of journalists and historians to correct that.
Twain, Mark
Journalism and Journalists
I have been complimented many times and they always embarrass me; I always feel that they have not said enough.
Twain, Mark
Compliments
To arrive at a just estimate of a renowned man s character one must judge it by the standards of his time, not ours.
Twain, Mark
Character
I can live for two months on a good compliment.
Twain, Mark
Compliments
Of all God s creatures there is only one that cannot be made the slave of the lash. That one is the cat. If man could be crossed with a cat it would improve man, but it would deteriorate the cat.
Twain, Mark
Cats
Man was made at the end of the week s work when God was tired.
Twain, Mark
Creativity
It is a time when one s spirit is subdued and sad, one knows not why; when the past seems a storm-swept desolation, life a vanity and a burden, and the future but a way to death.
Twain, Mark
Despair
I think a compliment ought to always precede a complaint, where one is possible, because it softens resentment and insures for the complaint a courteous and gentle reception.
Twain, Mark
Complaints and Complaining
Noise proves nothing, Often a hen who has laid an egg cackles as if she had laid an asteroid.
Twain, Mark
Complaints and Complaining
What is there that confers the noblest delight? What is that which swells a man s breast with pride above that which any other experience can bring to him? Discovery! To know that you are walking where none others have walked; that you are beholding what human eye has not seen before; that you are breathing a virgin atmosphere. To give birth to an idea, to discover a great thought -- an intellectual nugget, right under the dust of a field that many a brain-plough had gone over before. To find a new planet, to invent a new hinge, to find a way to make the lightning carry your messages. To be the first -- that is the idea.
Twain, Mark
Discovery
Why was the human race created? Or at least why wasn t something creditable created in place of it? God had His opportunity. He could have made a reputation. But no, He must commit this grotesque folly -- a lark which must have cost Him a regret or two when He came to think it over and observe effects.
Twain, Mark
Creation
A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.
Twain, Mark
Books - Reading
Loyalty to petrified opinions never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul in this world -- and never will.
Twain, Mark
Conservatives
The radical invents the views. When he has worn them out, the conservative adopts them.
Twain, Mark
Conservatives
Be careless in your dress if you must, but keep a tidy soul.
Twain, Mark
Dress
The radical of one century is the conservative of the next. The radical invents the views. When he has worn them out, the conservative adopts them.
Twain, Mark
Conservatives
Accident is the name of the greatest of all inventors.
Twain, Mark
Invention and Inventor
People are much more willing to lend you books than bookcases.
Twain, Mark
Books - Reading
My books are water; those of the great geniuses are wine -- everybody drinks water.
Twain, Mark
Books - Reading
Civilization is a limitless multiplication of unnecessary necessities.
Twain, Mark
Civilization
The man who does not read books has no advantage over the man that can not read them.
Twain, Mark
Books - Reading
Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.
Twain, Mark
Congress
What, then, is the true Gospel of consistency? Change. Who is the really consistent man? The man who changes. Since change is the law of his being, he cannot be consistent if he stick in a rut.
Twain, Mark
Consistency
We are discreet sheep; we wait to see how the drove is going, and then go with the drove.
Twain, Mark
Conformity
We must annex those people. We can afflict them with our wise and beneficent government. We can introduce the novelty of thieves, all the way up from street-car pickpockets to municipal robbers and Government defaulters, and show them how amusing it is to arrest them and try them and then turn them loose -- some for cash and some for political influence. We can make them ashamed of their simple and primitive justice. We can make that little bunch of sleepy islands the hottest corner on earth, and array it in the moral splendor of our high and holy civilization. Annexation is what the poor islanders need. Shall we to men benighted, the lamp of life deny?
Twain, Mark
Empire
A big leather-bound volume makes an ideal razor strap. A thin book is useful to stick under a table with a broken caster to steady it. A large, flat atlas can be used to cover a window with a broken pane. And a thick, old-fashioned heavy book with a clasp is the finest thing in the world to throw at a noisy cat.
Twain, Mark
Books - Reading
When a person cannot deceive himself the chances are against his being able to deceive other people.
Twain, Mark
Deception
Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear -- not absence of fear.
Twain, Mark
Courage
It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world, and moral courage so rare.
Twain, Mark
Courage
Put all your eggs in one basket and then watch that basket.
Twain, Mark
Caution
It s not the size of the dog in the fight, it s the size of the fight in the dog.
Twain, Mark
Courage
Don t part with your illusions. When they are gone you may still exist, but you have ceased to live.
Twain, Mark
Deception
Education is the path from cocky ignorance to miserable uncertainty.
Twain, Mark
Certainty
I can teach anybody how to get what they want out of life. The problem is that I can t find anybody who can tell me what they want.
Twain, Mark
Desire
Happiness ain t a thing in itself --it s only a contrast with something that ain t pleasant. And so, as soon as the novelty is over and the force of the contrast dulled, it ain t happiness any longer, and you have to get something fresh.
Twain, Mark
Happiness
History is strewn thick with evidence that a truth is not hard to kill, but a lie, well told, is immortal.
Twain, Mark
History and Historians
Forget and forgive. This is not difficult when properly understood. It means forget inconvenient duties, then forgive yourself for forgetting. By rigid practice and stern determination, it comes easy.
Twain, Mark
Forgiveness
Forgiveness is the fragrance the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.
Twain, Mark
Forgiveness
There are people who can do all fine and heroic things but one: keep from telling their happiness to the unhappy.
Twain, Mark
Happiness
Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life. The conviction of the rich that the poor are happier is no more foolish than the conviction of the poor that the rich are.
Twain, Mark
Friends and Friendship
Man will do many things to get himself loved; he will do all things to get himself envied.
Twain, Mark
Envy
Faith is believing what you know ain t so.
Twain, Mark
Faith
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.
Twain, Mark
Gratitude
Fortune knocks at every man s door once in a life, but in a good many cases the man is in a neighboring saloon and does not hear her.
Twain, Mark
Fortune
Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please.
Twain, Mark
Facts
Golf is a good walk spoiled.
Twain, Mark
Golf
Apparently there is nothing that cannot happen today.
Twain, Mark
Impossibility
Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint.
Twain, Mark
Health
The 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.
Twain, Mark
Health
Damn the subjunctive. It brings all our writers to shame.
Twain, Mark
Grammar
It was the schoolboy who said, Faith is believing what you know ain t so.
Twain, Mark
Faith
Familiarity breeds contempt; and children.
Twain, Mark
Familiarity
The trouble with you Chicago people is that you think you are the best people down here, whereas you are merely the most numerous.
Twain, Mark
Hell
A habit cannot be tossed out the window; it must be coaxed down the stairs a step at a time.
Twain, Mark
Habit
Habit is habit, and not to be flung out of the window by any man, but coaxed downstairs a step at a time.
Twain, Mark
Habit
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.
Twain, Mark
Freedom
He does not care for flowers. Calls them rubbish, and cannot tell one from another, and thinks it is superior to feel like that.
Twain, Mark
Flowers
It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress.
Twain, Mark
Government
One may make their house a palace of sham, or they can make it a home, a refuge.
Twain, Mark
Home
Honesty is the best policy -- when there is money in it.
Twain, Mark
Honesty
We are always too busy for our children; we never give them the time or interest they deserve. We lavish gifts upon them; but the most precious gift, our personal association, which means so much to them, we give grudgingly.
Twain, Mark
Family
Adam was the luckiest man; he had no mother-in-law.
Twain, Mark
Family
Life does not consist mainly, or even largely, of facts and happenings. It consists mainly of the storm of thought that is forever flowing through one s head.
Twain, Mark
Life and Living
What is the most rigorous law of our being? Growth. No smallest atom of our moral, mental, or physical structure can stand still a year. It grows -- it must grow; nothing can prevent it.
Twain, Mark
Growth
To stop smoking is the easiest thing I ever did. I ought to know; I ve done it a thousand times.
Twain, Mark
Habit
We are all alike, on the inside.
Twain, Mark
Equality
Evolution is the law of policies: Darwin said it, Socrates endorsed it, Cuvier proved it and established it for all time in his paper on The Survival of the Fittest. These are illustrious names, this is a mighty doctrine: nothing can ever remove it from its firm base, nothing dissolve it, but evolution.
Twain, Mark
Evolution
Thousands of geniuses live and die undiscovered -- either by themselves or by others.
Twain, Mark
Genius
I believe that our Heavenly Father invented man because he was disappointed in the monkey.
Twain, Mark
Evolution
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.
Twain, Mark
Fiction
When one has tasted it [Watermelon] he knows what the angels eat.
Twain, Mark
Food and Eating
I was young and foolish then; now I am old and foolisher.
Twain, Mark
Fools and Foolishness
It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.
Twain, Mark
Fools and Foolishness
There is nothing so annoying as a good example!!
Twain, Mark
Example
Let us so live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.
Twain, Mark
Life and Living
We have the best government that money can buy.
Twain, Mark
Government
Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example.
Twain, Mark
Example
Grief can take care of itself; but to get the full value of a joy you must have somebody to divide it with.
Twain, Mark
Friends and Friendship
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.
Twain, Mark
Experience
The cat, having sat upon a hot stove lid, will not sit upon a hot stove lid again. But he won t sit upon a cold stove lid, either.
Twain, Mark
Experience
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.
Twain, Mark
Friends and Friendship
A wise man does not waste so good a commodity as lying for naught.
Twain, Mark
Lies and Lying
A lie can run around the world six times while the truth is still trying to put on its pants.
Twain, Mark
Lies and Lying
Martyrdom covers a multitude of sins.
Twain, Mark
Martyrdom
Never let formal education get in the way of your learning.
Twain, Mark
Learning
To succeed in the other trades, capacity must be shown; in the law, concealment of it will do.
Twain, Mark
Law and Lawyers
I have a higher and grander standard of principle than George Washington. He could not lie; I can, but I won t.
Twain, Mark
Lies and Lying
If man had created man, he would be ashamed of his performance.
Twain, Mark
Humankind
We have a criminal jury system which is superior to any in the world; and its efficiency is only marred by the difficulty of finding twelve men every day who don t know anything and can t read.
Twain, Mark
Law and Lawyers
The human race has but one really affective weapon, and that is laughter.
Twain, Mark
Laughter
Laughter is the greatest weapon we have and we, as humans, use it the least.
Twain, Mark
Laughter
Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand.
Twain, Mark
Laughter
There is no such thing as the Queen s English. The property has gone into the hands of a joint stock company and we own the bulk of the shares!
Twain, Mark
Language
Never learn to do anything. If you don t learn, you will always find someone else to do it for you.
Twain, Mark
Learning
The highest perfection of politeness is only a beautiful edifice, built, from the base to the dome, of ungraceful and gilded forms of charitable and unselfish lying.
Twain, Mark
Manners
When I was younger, I could remember anything, whether it had happened or not.
Twain, Mark
Memory
If you are speaking the truth you don t have to remember anything.
Twain, Mark
Memory
It is better to deserve honors and not have them than to have them and not deserve them.
Twain, Mark
Honor
There are only two forces that can carry light to all the corners of the globe... the sun in the heavens and the Associated Press down here.
Twain, Mark
Media
Any so-called material thing that you want is merely a symbol: you want it not for itself, but because it will content your spirit for the moment.
Twain, Mark
Materialism
All I say is, kings is kings, and you got to make allowances. Take them all around, they re a mighty ornery lot. It s the way they re raised.
Twain, Mark
Kings
Both marriage and death ought to be welcome: The one promises happiness, doubtless the other assures it.
Twain, Mark
Marriage
One of the striking differences between a cat and a lie is that the cat has only nine lives.
Twain, Mark
Lies and Lying
Whenever you find that you are on the side of the majority, it is time to reform.
Twain, Mark
Majority
Nothing that grieves us can be called little: by the eternal laws of proportion a child s loss of a doll and a king s loss of a crown are events of the same size.
Twain, Mark
Losers and Losing
There is no God, no universe, no human race, no earthly life, no heaven, no hell. It is all a dream, a grotesque and foolish dream. Nothing exists but you. And you are but a thought --a vagrant thought, a useless thought, a homeless thought, wandering forlorn among the empty eternities!
Twain, Mark
Loneliness
Be good and you will be lonely.
Twain, Mark
Loneliness
There is a great deal of human nature in people.
Twain, Mark
Human Nature
We have not the reverent feeling for the rainbow that a savage has, because we know how it is made. We have lost as much as we gained by prying into that matter.
Twain, Mark
Knowledge
The master minds of all nations, in all ages, have sprung in affluent multitude from the mass of the nation, and from the mass of the nation only -- not from its privileged classes.
Twain, Mark
Masses
I must have a prodigious quantity of mind; it takes me as much as a week, sometimes, to make it up.
Twain, Mark
Indecision
I would rather have my ignorance than another man s knowledge, because I have so much of it.
Twain, Mark
Ignorance
When I was fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have him around. When I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years.
Twain, Mark
Ignorance
It isn t safe to sit in judgment upon another person s illusion when you are not on the inside. While you are thinking it is a dream, he may be knowing it is a planet.
Twain, Mark
Illusion
There are German songs which can make a stranger to the language cry.
Twain, Mark
Music
In the first place God made idiots. This was for practice. Then he made School Boards.
Twain, Mark
Idiots
The trouble with the world is not that people know too little, but that they know so many things that ain t so.
Twain, Mark
Knowledge
A crank is someone with a new idea -- until it catches on.
Twain, Mark
Ideas
The secret source of humor itself is not joy but sorrow. There is no humor in heaven.
Twain, Mark
Humor
Humor must not professedly teach and it must not professedly preach, but it must do both if it would live forever.
Twain, Mark
Humor
You cannot depend on your judgments when your imagination is out of focus.
Twain, Mark
Imagination
Let us consider that we are all partially insane. It will explain us to each other; it will unriddle many riddles; it will make clear and simple many things which are involved in haunting and harassing difficulties and obscurities now.
Twain, Mark
Insanity
There are times when one would like to hang the whole human race, and finish the farce.
Twain, Mark
Humankind
The human race was always interesting and we know by its past that it will always continue so, monotonously.
Twain, Mark
Humankind
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.
Twain, Mark
Intelligence and Intellectuals
Between us, we cover all knowledge; he knows all that can be known and I know the rest.
Twain, Mark
Knowledge
A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way.
Twain, Mark
Knowledge
You can t depend on your judgment when your imagination is out of focus.
Twain, Mark
Judgment and Judges
True irreverence is disrespect for another man s god.
Twain, Mark
Irreverence
Man is a creature made at the end of the week s work when God was tired.
Twain, Mark
Humankind
Such is the human race. Often it does seem such a pity that Noah and his party did not miss the boat.
Twain, Mark
Humankind
When we remember that we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained.
Twain, Mark
Insanity
Monarchies, aristocracies, and religions are all based upon that large defect in your race -- the individual s distrust of his neighbor, and his desire, for safety s or comfort s sake, to stand well in his neighbor s eye. These institutions will always remain, and always flourish, and always oppress you, affront you, and degrade you, because you will always be and remain slaves of minorities. There was never a country where the majority of the people were in their secret hearts loyal to any of these institutions.
Twain, Mark
Institutions
The way it is now, the asylums can hold the sane people but if we tried to shut up the insane we would run out of building materials.
Twain, Mark
Insanity
As a thinker and planner the ant is the equal of any savage race of men; as a self-educated specialist in several arts she is the superior of any savage race of men; and in one or two high mental qualities she is above the reach of any man, savage or civilized!
Twain, Mark
Insects
If He Tom Sawyer had been a great and wise philosopher, like the writer of this book, he would now have comprehended that Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do and Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.
Twain, Mark
Philosophers and Philosophy
Obscurity and competence: That is the life that is worth living.
Twain, Mark
Obscurity
The man who is ostentatious of his modesty is twin to the statue that wears a fig-leaf.
Twain, Mark
Modesty
There is nothing sadder than a young pessimist.
Twain, Mark
Pessimism
There is no sadder sight than a young pessimist, except an old optimist.
Twain, Mark
Optimism
The banging and slamming and booming and crashing were something beyond belief. [On Lohengrin]
Twain, Mark
Opera
Necessity is the mother of taking chances.
Twain, Mark
Necessity
All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence, and then Success is sure.
Twain, Mark
Success
Nations do not think, they only feel. They get their feelings at second hand through their temperaments, not their brains. A nation can be brought -- by force of circumstances, not argument -- to reconcile itself to any kind of government or religion that can be devised; in time it will fit itself to the required conditions; later it will prefer them and will fiercely fight for them.
Twain, Mark
Nations
My parents were neither very poor nor conspicuously honest.
Twain, Mark
Parents and Parenting
Let us be thankful for the fools. But for them the rest of us could not succeed.
Twain, Mark
Success
By common consent of all the nations and all the ages the most valuable thing in this world is the homage of men, whether deserved or undeserved.
Twain, Mark
Popularity
When you ascend the hill of prosperity, may you not meet a friend.
Twain, Mark
Prosperity
Few sinners are saved after the first twenty minutes of a sermon.
Twain, Mark
Preachers and Preaching
Under certain circumstances, profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer.
Twain, Mark
Prayer
More than once I had seen a noble who had gotten his enemy at a disadvantage stop to pray before cutting his throat.
Twain, Mark
Prayer
You can t pray a lie.
Twain, Mark
Prayer
Pity is for living, envy is for dead.
Twain, Mark
Pity
Warm summer sun, shine kindly here. Warm southern wind, blow softly here. Green sod above, lie light, lie light. Good night, dear Heart, Good night, good night.
Twain, Mark
Nature
He liked to like people, therefore people liked him.
Twain, Mark
Popularity
War talk by men who have been in a war is always interesting; whereas moon talk by a poet who has not been in the moon is likely to be dull.
Twain, Mark
Poetry and Poets
From his cradle to his grave a man never does a single thing which has any FIRST AND FOREMOST object but one -- to secure peace of mind, spiritual comfort, for HIMSELF.
Twain, Mark
Motives
I find that principles have no real force except when one is well fed.
Twain, Mark
Principles
Prosperity is the best protector of principle.
Twain, Mark
Principles
There it is: it doesn t make any difference who we are or what we are, there s always somebody to look down on! somebody to hold in light esteem, somebody to be indifferent about.
Twain, Mark
Superiority
Prosperity is the surest breeder of insolence I know.
Twain, Mark
Prosperity
We need not worry so much about what man descends from; it s what he descends to that shames the human race.
Twain, Mark
Success
Stars are good too. I wish I could get some to put in my hair. But I suppose I never can. You would be surprised to find how far off they are, for they do not look it. When they first showed last night I tried to knock some down with a pole, but it didn t reach, which astonished me. Then I tried clods till I was all tired out, but I never got one. I did make some close shots, for I saw the black blot of the clod sail right into thee midst of the golden clusters forty or fifty times, just barely missing them, and if I could ve held out a little longer, maybe I could ve got one.
Twain, Mark
Perseverance
To do something, say something, see something, before anybody else -- these are things that confer a pleasure compared with which other pleasures are tame and commonplace, other ecstasies cheap and trivial.
Twain, Mark
Precedents
Principles aren t of much account anyway, except at election time. After that you hang them up to let them season.
Twain, Mark
Principles
The man with a new idea is a crank until the idea succeeds.
Twain, Mark
Originality
The man who is a pessimist before 48 knows too much; if he is an optimist after it, he knows too little.
Twain, Mark
Optimism
Do not undervalue the headache. While it is at its sharpest it seems a bad investment; but when relief begins, the unexpired remainder is worth $4 a minute.
Twain, Mark
Pain
There s always something about your success that displeases even your best friends.
Twain, Mark
Success
Let me make the superstitions of a nation and I care not who makes its laws or its songs either.
Twain, Mark
Superstition
There are lies, damned lies, and statistics.
Twain, Mark
Statistics
If they had not landed there would be some reason for celebrating the fact.
Twain, Mark
Pilgrims
Pessimism is only the name that men of weak nerve give to wisdom.
Twain, Mark
Pessimism
The lack of money is the root of all evils.
Twain, Mark
Money
When the doctrine of allegiance to party can utterly up-end a man s moral constitution and make a temporary fool of him besides, what excuse are you going to offer for preaching it, teaching it, extending it, perpetuating it? Shall you say, the best good of the country demands allegiance to party? Shall you also say it demands that a man kick his truth and his conscience into the gutter, and become a mouthing lunatic, besides?
Twain, Mark
Politicians and Politics
Never put off until tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow.
Twain, Mark
Procrastination
In statesmanship get the formalities right, never mind about the moralities.
Twain, Mark
Politicians and Politics
Fleas can be taught nearly anything that a Congressman can.
Twain, Mark
Politicians and Politics
I am opposed to millionaires, but it would be dangerous to offer me the position.
Twain, Mark
Money
Hardly a man in the world has an opinion upon morals, politics or religion which he got otherwise than through his associations and sympathies. Broadly speaking, there are none but corn-pone opinions. And broadly speaking, Corn-Pone stands for Self-Approval. Self-approval is acquired mainly from the approval of other people. The result is Conformity.
Twain, Mark
Opinions
It is difference of opinion that makes horse races.
Twain, Mark
Opinions
It is not best that we should all think alike; it is a difference of opinion that makes horse races.
Twain, Mark
Opinions
Public opinion is held in reverence. It settles everything. Some think it is the voice of God.
Twain, Mark
Opinions
His money is twice tainted: taint yours and taint mine.
Twain, Mark
Money
Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.
Twain, Mark
Politicians and Politics
France has neither winter nor summer nor morals. Apart from these drawbacks it is a fine country.
Twain, Mark
Nations
Temperate temperance is best; intemperate temperance injures the cause of temperance.
Twain, Mark
Moderation
My mother had a great deal of trouble with me, but I think she enjoyed it.
Twain, Mark
Mothers
The miracle, or the power, that elevates the few is to be found in their industry, application, and perseverance under the prompting of a brave, determined spirit.
Twain, Mark
Perseverance
Switzerland is simply a large, lumpy, solid rock with a thin skin of grass stretched over it.
Twain, Mark
Nations
October. This is one of the peculiarly dangerous months to speculate in stocks in. The others are July, January, September, April, November, May, March, June, December, August, and February.
Twain, Mark
Stock Market
What a good thing Adam had. When he said a good thing, he knew nobody had said it before.
Twain, Mark
Plagiarism
A man can seldom -- very, very, seldom -- fight a winning fight against his training; the odds are too heavy.
Twain, Mark
Training
Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest.
Twain, Mark
Right and Rightness
Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond; cauliflower is nothing, but cabbage with a college education.
Twain, Mark
Training
It takes an enemy and a friend, working together, to hurt you to the heart. The one to slander you, and the other to get the news to you.
Twain, Mark
Slander
What do we call love, hate, charity, revenge, humanity, forgiveness? Different results of the master impulse, the necessity of securing one s self-approval.
Twain, Mark
Self-approval
The law of God, as quite plainly expressed in woman s construction, is this: There shall be no limit put upon your intercourse with the other sex sexually, at any time of life. During twenty-three days in every month (in the absence of pregnancy) from the time a woman is seven years old till she dies of old age, she is ready for action, and competent. As competent as the candlestick is to receive the candle. Competent every day, competent every night. Also, she wants that candle -- yearns for it, longs for it, hankers after it, as commanded by the law of God in her heart.
Twain, Mark
Sex
In his private heart no man much respects himself.
Twain, Mark
Respectability
A monarch, when good, is entitled to the consideration which we accord to a pirate who keeps Sunday School between crimes; when bad, he is entitled to none at all.
Twain, Mark
Royalty
You perceive I generalize with intrepidity from single instances. It is the tourist s custom.
Twain, Mark
Travel and Tourism
I cannot see how a man of any large degree of humorous perception can ever be religious -- except he purposely shut the eyes of his mind and keep them shut by force.
Twain, Mark
Religion
Man is the only creature who has a nasty mind.
Twain, Mark
Thoughts and Thinking
We like a man to come right out and say what he thinks, if we agree with him.
Twain, Mark
Thoughts and Thinking
The most difficult We do not deal in facts when we are contemplating ourselves.
Twain, Mark
Self-esteem
I have found out that there ain t no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than to travel with them.
Twain, Mark
Travel and Tourism
If you have nothing to say, say nothing.
Twain, Mark
Speakers and Speaking
There is nothing in the world like a persuasive speech to fuddle the mental apparatus.
Twain, Mark
Speakers and Speaking
It is a good and gentle religion, but inconvenient.
Twain, Mark
Religion
To be good is noble, but to teach others how to be good is nobler and less trouble.
Twain, Mark
Teachers and Teaching
There was never a century nor a country that was short of experts who knew the Deity s mind and were willing to reveal it.
Twain, Mark
Theology
When people do not respect us we are sharply offended; yet deep down in his private heart no man much respects himself.
Twain, Mark
Respectability
There are many scapegoats for our sins, but the most popular is providence.
Twain, Mark
Providence
To cease smoking is the easiest thing I ever did, I ought to know because I ve done it a thousand times.
Twain, Mark
Smoking
Wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been.
Twain, Mark
Smile
It is easier to stay out than get out.
Twain, Mark
Temptation
No God and no religion can survive ridicule. No political church, no nobility, no royalty or other fraud, can face ridicule in a fair field, and live.
Twain, Mark
Ridicule
It usually takes more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech.
Twain, Mark
Speech
I don t know of a single foreign product that enters this country untaxed, except the answer to prayer.
Twain, Mark
Taxes and Taxation
The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug.
Twain, Mark
Words
Never tell the truth to people who are not worthy of it.
Twain, Mark
Truth
I don t give a damn for man that can spell a word only one way.
Twain, Mark
Words
There are two times in a man s life when he should not speculate: when he can t afford it, and when he can.
Twain, Mark
Speculation
An average English word is four letters and a half. By hard, honest labor I ve dug all the large words out of my vocabulary and shaved it down till the average is three and a half... I never write metropolis for seven cents, because I can get the same money for city. I never write policeman, because I can get the same price for cop.... I never write valetudinarian at all, for not even hunger and wretchedness can humble me to the point where I will do a word like that for seven cents; I wouldn t do it for fifteen.
Twain, Mark
Words
A powerful agent is the right word. Whenever we come upon one of those intensely right words... the resulting effect is physical as well as spiritual, and electrically prompt.
Twain, Mark
Words
The Pause; that impressive silence, that eloquent silence, that geometrically progressive silence which often achieves a desired effect where no combination of words, however so felicitous, could accomplish it.
Twain, Mark
Silence
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn t.
Twain, Mark
Truth
The right word may be effective, but no word was ever as effective as a rightly timed pause.
Twain, Mark
Words
I know all those people. I have friendly, social, and criminal relations with the whole lot of them.
Twain, Mark
Taxes and Taxation
If you tell the truth, you don t have to remember anything.
Twain, Mark
Truth
Out of the unconscious lips of babes and sucklings are we satirized.
Twain, Mark
Sarcasm
I refused to attend his funeral. But I wrote a very nice letter explaining that I approved of it.
Twain, Mark
Sarcasm
I never could tell a lie that anybody would doubt, nor a truth that anybody would believe.
Twain, Mark
Truth
Everyone is like a moon, and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody.
Twain, Mark
Secrets
I could have become a soldier if I had waited; I knew more about retreating than the man who invented retreating.
Twain, Mark
Soldier
Often the surest way to convey misinformation is to tell the strict truth.
Twain, Mark
Truth
Truth is neither alive nor dead; it just aggravates itself all the time.
Twain, Mark
Truth
Nothing so needs reforming as other people s habits.
Twain, Mark
Reform
I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened.
Twain, Mark
Trials
No real gentleman will tell the naked truth in the presence of ladies.
Twain, Mark
Truth
Scientists have odious manners, except when you prop up their theory; then you can borrow money of them.
Twain, Mark
Science and Scientists
A joke, even if it be a lame one, is nowhere so keenly relished or quickly applauded as in a murder trial.
Twain, Mark
Trials
It is a good idea to obey all the rules when you re young just so you ll have the strength to break them when you re old.
Twain, Mark
Rules
I am admonished in many ways that time is pushing me inexorably along. I am approaching the threshold of age; in 1977 I shall be 142. This is no time to be flitting about the earth. I must cease from the activities proper to youth and begin to take on the dignities and gravities and inertia proper to that season of honorable senility which is on its way.
Twain, Mark
Age and Aging
Let us not be too particular; it is better to have old secondhand diamonds than none at all.
Twain, Mark
Age and Aging
Where a blood relation sobs, an intimate friend should choke up, a distant acquaintance should sigh, a stranger should merely fumble sympathetically with his handkerchief.
Twain, Mark
Funerals
Heaven goes by favor; if it went by merit, you would stay out and your dog would go in.
Twain, Mark
Heaven
Life would be infinitely happier if we could only be born at the age of eighty and gradually approach eighteen.
Twain, Mark
Age and Aging
A man s house burns down. The smoking wreckage represents only a ruined home that was dear through years of use and pleasant associations. By and by, as the days and weeks go on, first he misses this, then that, then the other thing. And when he casts about for it he finds that it was in that house. Always it is an essential -- there was but one of its kind. It cannot be replaced. It was in that house. It is irrevocably lost. It will be years before the tale of lost essentials is complete, and not till then can he truly know the magnitude of his disaster.
Twain, Mark
Bereavement
I did not attend his funeral; but I wrote a nice letter saying I approved of it. [About a politician who had recently died]
Twain, Mark
Funerals
The cross of the Legion of Honor has been conferred on me. However, few escape that distinction.
Twain, Mark
Awards
I have never taken any exercise except sleeping and resting.
Twain, Mark
Exercise
It is nobler to be good, and it is nobler to teach others to be good -- and less trouble!
Twain, Mark
Aristocracy
The first half of life consists of the capacity to enjoy without the chance; the last half consists of the chance without the capacity.
Twain, Mark
Enjoyment
On with dance, let joy be unconfined, is my motto; whether there s any dance to dance or any joy to unconfined.
Twain, Mark
Dance and Dancing
In Boston they ask, How much does he know? In New York, How much is he worth? In Philadelphia, Who were his parents?
Twain, Mark
America
That s what an army is -- a mob; they don t fight with courage that s born in them, but with courage that s borrowed from their mass, and from their officers.
Twain, Mark
Army and Navy
A man cannot be made comfortable without his own approval.
Twain, Mark
Aid and Assistance
A banker is a fellow who lends his umbrella when the sun is shining and wants it back the minute it begins to rain.
Twain, Mark
Bankers and Banking
It was wonderful to find America, but it would have been more wonderful to miss it.
Twain, Mark
America
A good memory and a tongue tied in the middle is a combination which gives immortality to conversation.
Twain, Mark