Mark Twain Quotes

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.

Temperate temperance is best; intemperate temperance injures the cause of temperance.

I have never taken any exercise except sleeping and resting.

Man is the only animal that blushes. Or needs to.

Sometimes too much to drink is barely enough.

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.

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

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

Man has imagined a heaven, and has left entirely out of it the supremest of all his delights…sexual intercourse!…His heaven is like himself: strange, interesting, astonishing, grotesque. I give you my word, it has not a single feature in it that he actually values.

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.

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

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

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.

Civilization is a limitless multiplication of unnecessary necessities.

My parents were neither very poor nor conspicuously honest.

I never could keep a promise. I do not blame myself for this weakness, because the fault must lie in my physical organization. It is likely that such a very liberal amount of space was given to the organ which enables me to make promises that the organ which should enable me to keep them was crowded out. But I grieve not. I like no half-way things. I had rather have one faculty nobly developed than two faculties of mere ordinary capacity.

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

There is nothing in the world like a persuasive speech to fuddle the mental apparatus.

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.

There is no distinctly American criminal class – except Congress.

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