Popular Mark Twain's Quotes And Sayings

The nation is divided, half patriots and half traitors, and no man can tell which from which.

If Christ were here now there is one thing he would not be — a Christian.

A Patriot is someone who stands for his country always, and for his government when it is deserved.

The cost of living hasn't effected its popularity.

If you can't stand solitude, perhaps others find you boring as well.

If you hold a cat by the tail you learn things you cannot learn any other way.

It's no wonder that truth is stranger than fiction. Fiction has to make sense.

It is wiser to find out than to suppose.

I saw a startling sight today, a politician with his hands in his own pockets.

Never let the truth get in the way of a good story.

Those who do not read the news are uninformed. Those who do are misinformed.

Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company.

Adam was the luckiest man in the world. He had no mother-in-law.

I do not wish any reward but to know I have done the right thing.

The secret of getting ahead is getting started

Love your enemy, it will scare the hell out of them.

I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it.

Comparison is the death of joy.

Strange a God who mouths Golden Rules and forgiveness, then invented hell; who mouths morals to other people and has none Himself; who frowns upon crimes yet commits them all; who created man without invitation, then tries to shuffle the responsibility for man's acts upon man, instead of honorably placing it where it belongs, upon Himself; and finally with altogether divine obtuseness, invites this poor, abused slave to worship Him!

Do something everyday that you don't want to do; this is the golden rule for acquiring the habit of doing your duty without pain.

How many of you believe in telekinesis? Raise my hand.

The secret of making progress is to get started.

It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so.

Some people give their problems swimming lessons instead of drowning them.

Never have a battle of wits with an unarmed person.

I am pushing sixty. That is enough exercise for me.

A good lawyer knows the law; a clever one takes the judge to lunch.

Data is like garbage. You'd better know what you are going to do with it before you collect it.

I don't like to commit myself about heaven and hell - you see, I have friends in both places.

A banker is a fellow who lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining, but wants it back the minute it begins to rain.

Education is what you must acquire without any interference from your schooling.

The best cure for Christianity is reading the Bible.

Additional problems are the offspring of poor solutions.

The trouble is not in dying for a friend, but in finding a friend worth dying for.

For the majority of us, the past is a regret, the future an experiment

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?

Unused talents gives you no advantage over someone who has no talent at all.

Of all the animals, man is the only one that lies.

When in doubt tell the truth. It will confound your enemies and astound your friends.

Pessimism is only the name that men of weak nerve give to wisdom.

Worrying is paying interest on a debt you might not even owe.

I hate to hear people say this Judge will vote so and so, because he is a Democrat -- and this one so and so because he is a Republican. It is shameful. The Judges have the Constitution for their guidance; they have no right to any politics save the politics of rigid right and justice when they are sitting in judgment upon the great matters that come before them.

The difference between those that succeed and those that fail is, those that succeeded tried.

Everyone is a moon, and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody.

The only 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.

Never put off till tomorrow what you can do day after tomorrow just as well.

The government is merely a servant―merely a temporary servant; it cannot be its prerogative to determine what is right and what is wrong, and decide who is a patriot and who isn't. Its function is to obey orders, not originate them.

Begin with the determination to succeed and the work is half done already.

great people are those who make others feel that they, too, can become great.

When you fish for love, bait with your heart, not your brain.

Some of the worst things in my life never even happened.

Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that but the really great make you feel that you too can become great. When you are seeking to bring big plans to fruition it is important with whom you regularly associate. Hang out with friends who are like-minded and who are also designing purpose-filled lives. Similarly be that kind of a friend for your friends.

Don't wait the time is never just right.

Laughter is the greatest weapon we have and we, as humans, use it the least.

Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.

Education: the path from cocky ignorance to miserable uncertainty.

You can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.

Man is a Religious Animal. He is the only Religious Animal. He is the only animal that has the True Religion--several of them. He is the only animal that loves his neighbor as himself and cuts his throat if his theology isn't straight. He has made a graveyard of the globe in trying his honest best to smooth his brother's path to happiness and heaven....The higher animals have no religion. And we are told that they are going to be left out in the Hereafter. I wonder why? It seems questionable taste.

The dog is a gentleman; I hope to go to his heaven not man's.

Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.

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

Climate is what we expect, weather is what we get.

Heaven is by favor; if it were by merit your dog would go in and you would stay out. Of all the creatures ever made (man) is the most detestable. Of the entire brood, he is the only one... that possesses malice. He is the only creature that inflicts pain for sport, knowing it to be pain.

You can't break a bad habit by throwing it out the window. You've got to walk it slowly down the stairs.

Apparently there is nothing that cannot happen today.

The less a man knows the bigger the noise he makes and the higher the salary he commands.

When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.

There was never yet an uninteresting life. Such a thing is an impossibility. Inside of the dullest exterior there is a drama, a comedy, and a tragedy.

College is a place where a professor's lecture notes go straight to the students' lecture notes, without passing through the brains of either.

So avoid using the word 'very' because it's lazy. A man is not very tired, he is exhausted. Don't use very sad, use morose. Language was invented for one reason, boys - to woo women - and, in that endeavor, laziness will not do. It also won't do in your essays. What you do today is important, because you are sacrificing a day of your life for it. Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured.

Laws control the lesser man... Right conduct controls the greater one.

Men are like bank accounts. The more money, the more interest they generate.

A baby is an inestimable blessing and bother.

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

Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please.

The most interesting information comes from children, for they tell all they know and then stop.

The worst loneliness is not to be comfortable with yourself.

Writing is easy. All you have to do is cross out the wrong words.

But who prays for Satan? Who, in eighteen centuries, has had the common humanity to pray for the one sinner that needed it most?

In the first place, God made idiots. That was for practice. Then he made school boards.

There is no such thing as a new idea. It is impossible. We simply take a lot of old ideas and put them into a sort of mental kaleidoscope. We give them a turn and they make new and curious combinations. We keep on turning and making new combinations indefinitely; but they are the same old pieces of colored glass that have been in use through all the ages.

We like a man to come right out and say what he thinks- if we agree with him.

A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval. There is nothing more satisfying than that sense of being completely "at home" in your own skin. When you achieve that as a natural state of "being", then you can finally look beyond yourself and fully contribute all your talents to the world.

A marriage...makes of two fractional lives a whole; it gives to two purposeless lives a work, and doubles the strength of each to perform it; it gives to two questioning natures a reason for living, and something to live for; it will give a new gladness to the sunshine, a new fragrance to the flowers, a new beauty to the earth, and a new mystery to life.

It is better to deserve honors and not have them than to have them and not deserve them.

If you want love and abundance in your life, give it away.

Sacred cows make the best hamburger.

The past does not repeat itself, but it rhymes.

Every person is a book, each year a chapter.

If you have nothing to say, say nothing.

Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint.

A human being has a natural desire to have more of a good thing than he needs.

Enthusiasm is caught, not taught.

There's always something about your success that displeases even your best friends.

The only difference between a tax man and a taxidermist is that the taxidermist leaves the skin.

To lodge all power in one party and keep it there is to insure bad government and the sure and gradual deterioration of the public morals.

The common eye sees only the outside of things, and judges by that, but the seeing eye pierces through and reads the heart and the soul, finding there capacities which the outside didn't indicate or promise, and which the other kind of eye couldn't detect.

It's easy to make friends, but hard to get rid of them.

Heaven goes by favor. If it went by merit, you would stay out and your dog would go in.

Man is the only Patriot. He sets himself apart in his own country, under his own flag, and sneers at the other nations, and keeps multitudinous uniformed assassins on hand at heavy expense to grab slices of other people's countries, and keep them from grabbing slices of his. And in the intervals between campaigns he washes the blood off his hands and works for the universal brotherhood of man - with his mouth.