Best Mark Twain Quotes & Sayings

spiritual wants and instincts are as various in the human family as are physical appetites, complexions, and features, and a man is only at his best, morally, when he is equipped with the religious garment whose color and shape and size most nicely accommodate themselves to the spiritual complexion, angularities, and stature of the individual who wears it; and, besides, I was afraid of a united Church; it makes a mighty power, the mightiest conceivable, and then when it by and by gets into selfish hands, as it is always bound to do, it means death to human liberty and paralysis to human thought. — Mark Twain

The best and most telling speech is not the actual impromptu one but the counterfeit of it. — Mark Twain

There is no easy or quick plan to happiness, there is no single spot where you can start. Where you are right now is the best place to begin. — Mark Twain

Satan (impatiently) to Newcomer: The trouble with you Chicago people is, that you think you are the best people down here; whereas you are merely the most numerous. — Mark Twain

A reputable lawyer will advise you to keep out of the law, make the best of a foolish bargain, and not get caught again. — Mark Twain

The election makes me think of a story of a man who was dying. He had only two minutes to live, so he sent for a clergyman and asked him, "Where is the best place to go to?" He was undecided about it. So the minister told him that each place had its advantages
heaven for climate, and hell for society. — Mark Twain

Man is a marvelous curiosity. When he is at his very very best he is a sort of low grade nickel-plated angel; at is worst he is unspeakable, unimaginable; and first and last and all the time he is a sarcasm. Yet he blandly and in all sincerity calls himself the noblest work of God. — Mark Twain

I have tried getting up early, and I have tried getting up late-and the latter agrees with me best. — Mark Twain

Temperate temperance is best; intemperate temperance injures the cause of temperance. — Mark Twain

Imagination labors best in distant fields. — Mark Twain

To my mind that literature is best and most enduring which is characterized by a noble simplicity. — Mark Twain

It is best to read the weather forecast before praying for rain. — Mark Twain

Satan laughed his unkind laugh to a finish; then he said: It is a remarkable progress. In five or six thousand years five or six high civilizations have risen, flourished, commanded the wonder of the world, then faded out and disappeared; and not one of them except the latest ever invented any sweeping and adequate way to kill people. They all did their best
to kill being the chiefest ambition of the human race and the earliest incident in its history
but only the Christian civilization has scored a triumph to be proud of. Two or three centuries from now it will be recognized that all the competent killers are Christians; then the pagan world will go to school to the Christian
not to acquire his religion, but his guns. The Turk and the Chinaman will buy those to kill missionaries and converts with. — Mark Twain

You can see by these things that she was of a rather vain and frivolous character; still, she had virtues, and enough to make up, I think. She had a kind heart and gentle ways, and never harbored resentments for injuries done her, but put them easily out of her mind and forgot them; and she taught her children her kindly way, and from her we learned also to be brave and prompt in time of danger, and not to run away, but face the peril that threatened friend or stranger, and help him the best we could without stopping to think what the cost might be to us. And she taught us not by words only, but by example, and that is the best way and the surest and the most lasting. Why, the brave things she did, the splendid things! she was just a soldier; and so modest about it - well, you couldn't help admiring her, and you couldn't help imitating her; not even a King Charles spaniel could remain entirely despicable in her society. So, as you see, there was more to her than her education. — Mark Twain

When you catch an adjective, kill it - perhaps the best possible advice for budding writers. — Mark Twain

Delicacy - a sad, sad false delicacy - robs literature of the two best things among its belongings: Family-circle narratives & obscene stories. — Mark Twain

The best cure for Christianity is reading the Bible. — Mark Twain

The two Great Unknowns, the two Illustrious Conjecturabilities! They are the best known unknown persons that have ever drawn breath upon the planet. — Mark Twain

We have the best government that money can buy. — Mark Twain

Make the best o' things the way you find 'em.. — Mark Twain

American culture has a lot of great moustaches in its history. Mark Twain had a great moustache, Charlie Chaplin, Ben Turpin ... but Zappa, he's got the best moustache in American history. Got the moustache, right, and he's got that little thing on his chin, I think it's called an imperial, that is, like, the coolest thing. That's like one of the great icons of the twentieth century. — Matt Groening

The best stories in our culture have some sort of subversiveness - Mark Twain, 'Catcher in the Rye.' You provide kids with great stories and teach them how to use the tools to make their own. — Matt Groening

It is not best to use our morals weekdays, it gets them out of repair for Sunday. — Mark Twain

Honesty: The best of all the lost arts. — Mark Twain

Of all the various kinds of sexual intercourse, this has the least to recommend it. As an amusement, it is too fleeting; as an occupation, it is too wearing; as a public exhibition, there is no money in it. It is unsuited to the drawing room, and in the most cultured society it has long been banished from the social board. It has at last, in our day of progress and improvement, been degraded to brotherhood with flatulence. Among the best bred, these two arts are now indulged in only private
though by consent of the whole company, when only males are present, it is still permissible, in good society, to remove the embargo on the fundamental sigh. — Mark Twain

Independence-is loyalty to one's best self and principles, and this is often disloyalty to the general idols and fetishes. — Mark Twain

It seems incredible to those who knew Mark Twain in his later years - dreamy, unpractical, and indifferent to details - that he could have acquired so vast a store of minute facts as were required by that task. Yet within eighteen months he had become not only a pilot, but one of the best and most careful pilots on the river, intrusted with some of the largest and most valuable steamers. He continued in that profession for two and a half years longer, and during that time met with no disaster that cost his owners a single dollar for damage. Then — Mark Twain

At the time that the telegraph brought the news of his death, I was on the Pacific coast. I was a fresh new journalist, and needed a nom de guerre; so I confiscated the ancient mariner's discarded one, and have done my best to make it remain what it was in his hands - a sign and symbol and warrant that whatever is found in its company may be gambled on as being the petrified truth; how I have succeeded, it would not be modest in me to say. — Mark Twain

Obscurity and a competence - that is the life that is best worth living. — Mark Twain

The best of all lost arts is honesty — Mark Twain

The best American writers have come from the hinterlands
Mark Twain, Theodore Dreiser, Jack London, Hemingway, Faulkner, Wolfe, Steinbeck. Most of them never even went to college. — Edward Abbey

Even our behavior and emotions seem to have been shaped by a prankster. Why do we crave the very foods that are bad for us but have less desire for pure grains and vegetables? Why do we keep eating when we know we are too fat? And why is our willpower so weak in its attempts to restrain our desires? Why are male and female sexual responses so uncoordinated, instead of being shaped for maximum mutual satisfaction? Why are so many of us constantly anxious, spending our lives, as Mark Twain said, "suffering from tragedies that never occur"? Finally, why do we find happiness so elusive, with the achievement of each long-pursued goal yielding not contentment, but only a new desire for something still less attainable? The design of our bodies is simultaneously extraordinarily precise and unbelievably slipshod. It is as if the best engineers in the universe took every seventh day off and turned the work over to bumbling amateurs. — Randolph M. Nesse

The best way to cheer yourself is to try to cheer someone else up. — Mark Twain

We have to keep our God placated with prayers, and even then we are never sure of him
how much higher and finer is the Indian's God ... Our illogical God is all-powerful in name, but impotent in fact; the Great Spirit is not all-powerful, but does the very best he can for his injun and does it free of charge. — Mark Twain

To whatever extent the Hell's Angels may or may be latent sadomasochists or repressed homosexuals is to me
after nearly a year in the constant company of outlaw motorcyclists
almost entirely irrelevant. There are literary critics who insist that Ernest Hemingway was a tortured queer and that Mark Twain was haunted to the end of his days by a penchant for interracial buggery. It is a good way to stir up a tempest in the academic quarterlies, but it won't change a word of what either man wrote, nor alter the impact of their work on the world they were writing about. Perhaps Manolete was a hoof fetishist, or suffered from terrible hemorrhoids as a result of long nights in Spanish horn parlors ... but he was a great matador, and it is hard to see how any amount of Freudian theorizing can have the slightest effect on the reality of the thing he did best. — Hunter S. Thompson

The best way to cheer yourself up is to try to cheer somebody else up. — Mark Twain

I told that girl, in the kindest, gentlest way, that I could not consent to deliver judgment upon any one's manuscript, because an individual's verdict was worthless. It might underrate a work of high merit and lose it to the world, or it might overrate a trashy production and so open the way for its infliction upon the world. I said that the great public was the only tribunal competent to sit in judgment upon a literary effort, and therefore it must be best to lay it before that tribunal in the outset, since in the end it must stand or fall by that mighty court's decision any way. — Mark Twain

It didn't take me long to make up my mind that these liars warn't no kings nor dukes at all, but just low-down humbugs and frauds. But I never said nothing, never let on; kept it to myself; it's the best way; then you don't have no quarrels, and don't get into no trouble. If they wanted us to call them kings and dukes, I hadn't no objections, 'long as it would keep peace in the family; and it warn't no use to tell Jim, so I didn't tell him. If I never learnt nothing else out of pap, I learnt that the best way to get along with his kind of people is to let them have their own way. — Mark Twain

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? — Mark Twain

The hunter concealed himself and imitated the turkey-call by sucking the air through the leg-bone of a turkey which had previously answered a call like that and lived only just long enough to regret it. There is nothing that furnishes a perfect turkey-call except that bone. Another of Nature's treacheries, you see. She is full of them; half the time she doesn't know which she likes best - to betray her child or protect it. — Mark Twain

Mark Twain put it best when he said, 'Reports of my demise are greatly exaggerated,. — Bill Bradley

When one writes a novel about grown people, he knows exactly where to stop - that is, with a marriage; but when he writes about juveniles, he must stop where he best can. — Mark Twain

All large political doctrines are rich in difficult problems - problems that are quite above the average citizen's reach. And that is not strange, since they are also above the reach of the ablest minds in the country; after all the fuss and all the talk, not one of those doctrines has been conclusively proven to be the right one and the best. — Mark Twain

The best swordsman in the world doesn't need to fear the second best swordsman in the world; no, the person for him to be afraid of is some ignorant antagonist who has never had a sword in his hand before; he doesn't do the thing he ought to do, and so the expert isn't prepared for him; he does the thing he ought not to do; and often it catches the expert out and ends him on the spot. — Mark Twain

He done his level best.

Was he a mining on the flat..
He done it with a zest..
Was he a leading of the choir..
He done his level best.

If he'd a reg'lar task to do,
He never took no rest..
Or if 'twas off and on the same..
He done his level best.

If he was preachin' on his beat,
He'd tramp from east to west,
And north to south ..in cold and heat..
He done his level best.

He'd Yank a sinner outen (Hades),
And land him with the blest;
Then snatch a prayer'n waltz in again,
And do his level best.

He'd cuss and sing and howl and pray,
And dance and drink and jest,
He done his level best.

Whate'er this man was sot to do
He done it with a zest;
No matter what his contract was,
He'd do his level best... — Mark Twain

Our best built certainties are but sand-houses and subject to damage from any wind of doubt that blows — Mark Twain

IN the morning we went up to the village and bought a wire rat-trap and fetched it down, and unstopped the best rat-hole, and in about an hour we had fifteen of the bulliest kind of ones; and then we took it and put it in a safe place under Aunt Sally's bed. But while we was gone for spiders little Thomas Franklin Benjamin Jefferson Elexander Phelps found it there, and opened the door of it to see if the rats would come out, and they did; and Aunt Sally she come in, and when we got back she was a- standing on top of the bed raising Cain, and the rats was doing what they could to keep off the dull times for her. So she took and dusted us both with the hickry, and we was as much as two hours catching another fifteen or sixteen, drat that meddlesome cub, and they warn't the likeliest, nuther, because the first haul was the pick of the flock. I never see a likelier lot of rats than what that first haul was. — Mark Twain

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. — Mark Twain

Do you know who Samuel Langhorne Clemens is, Antonio?" Bessie asked.
"No, chood I?" he said.
"He is best known as Mark Twain, the author of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer," she said.
"I have herd of the story, but I hav not red the booc," he said.
"Well, you should read it," she said. "It is excellent reading. An American classic. Mark Twain worked in Schoharie for a while," she said.
"Is that so?" he said.
"Yes, he worked as a brakeman on the Schoharie railroad station on Depot Street the winter of 1879, three years after he wrote his famous book," Bessie said.
"Why would he do that, a famos author?" Antonio asked.
"A self-published author, I should add. — Yasmin Tirado-Chiodini

Always obey your parents. When they are present. This is the best policy in the long run. Because if you don't, they will make you. Most parents think they know better than you do, and you can generally make more by humoring that superstition than you can by acting on your own better judgment. — Mark Twain

There are people who think that honesty is always the best policy. This is a superstition; there are times when the appearance of it is worth six of it. — Mark Twain

They say I work for the angels they never said I was one — Mark Twain

Each of us knows it all, and knows he knows it all - the rest, to a man, are fools and eluded. One man knows there is a hell, the next one knows there isn't; one man knows monarchy is best, the next one knows it isn't; one man knows high tariff is right, the next man knows it isn't; one man knows there are witches, the next one knows there aren't; one sect knows its religion is the only true one, there are sixty-four thousand five hundred million sects that know it isn't so. — Mark Twain

We like to read about rich people in the newspapers; the papers know it, and they do their best to keep this appetite liberally fed. — Mark Twain

The best minds will tell you that when a man has begotten a child he is morally bound to tenderly care for it, protect it from hurt, shield it from disease, clothe it, feed it, bear with its waywardness, lay no hand upon it save in kindness and for its own good, and never in any case inflict upon it a wanton cruelty. God's treatment of his earthly children, every day and every night, is the exact opposite of all that, yet those best minds warmly justify these crimes, condone them, excuse them, and indignantly refuse to regard them as crimes at all, when he commits them. — Mark Twain

If it's your job to eat a frog, it's best to do it first thing in the morning. And If it's your job to eat two frogs, it's best to eat the biggest one first. — Mark Twain

History never repeats itself; at best it sometimes rhymes. — Mark Twain

True love is the only heart disease that is best left to "run on"
the only affection of the heart for which there is no help, and none desired. — Mark Twain

People talk about beautiful relationships between two persons of the same sex. What is the best of that sort as compared with the friendship of man and wife where the best impulses and highest ideals of both are the same? There is no place for comparison between the two friendships; the one is earthly, the other divine. — Mark Twain

The best of us would rather be popular than right. — Mark Twain

I like Joan of Arc best of all my books; and it is the best; I know it perfectly well. — Mark Twain

After breakfast they went whooping and prancing out on the bar, and chased each other round and round, shedding clothes as they went, until they were naked, and then continued the frolic far away up the shoal water of the bar, against the stiff current, which latter tripped their legs from under them from time to time and greatly increased the fun. And now and then they stooped in a group and splashed water in each other's faces with their palms, gradually approaching each other, with averted faces to avoid the strangling sprays, and finally gripping and struggling till the best man ducked his neighbor, and then they all went under in a tangle of white legs and arms and came up blowing, sputtering, laughing, and gasping for breath at one and the same time. — Mark Twain

But death was sweet, death was gentle, death was kind; death healed the bruised spirit and the broken heart, and gave them rest and forgetfulness; death was man's best friend; when man could endure life no longer, death came and set him free. — Mark Twain

The humorous story is told gravely; the teller does his best to conceal the fact that he even dimly suspects that there is anything funny about it. — Mark Twain

A religion that comes of thought, and study, and deliberate conviction, sticks best. The revivalized convert who is scared in the direction of heaven because he sees hell yawn suddenly behind him, not only regains confidence when his scare is over, but is ashamed of himself for being scared, and often becomes more hopelessly and malignantly wicked than he was before. — Mark Twain

Prosperity is the best protector of principle. — Mark Twain

In German, a young lady has no sex, while a turnip has. Think what overwrought reverence that shows for the turnip, and what callous disrespect for the girl. See how it looks in print - I translate this from a conversation in one of the best of the German Sunday-school books: "Gretchen. Wilhelm, where is the turnip? "Wilhelm. She has gone to the kitchen. "Gretchen. Where is the accomplished and beautiful English maiden? "Wilhelm. It has gone to the opera. — Mark Twain

A little starvation can really do more for the average sick man than can the best medicines and the best doctors. — Mark Twain

Honesty is the best policy - when there is money in it. — Mark Twain

The lie, as a virtue, a principle, is eternal; the lie, as a recreation, a solace, a refuge in time of need, the fourth Grace, the tenth Muse, man's best and surest friend is immortal — Mark Twain

Boggs comes a-tearing along on his horse, whooping and yelling like an Injun, and singing out: "Clear the track, thar. I'm on the waw-path, and the price uv coffins is a-gwyne to raise."
He was drunk, and weaving about in his saddle; he was over fifty year old, and had a very red face. Everybody yelled at him and laughed at him and sassed him, and he sassed back, and said he'd attend to them and lay them out in their regular turns, but he couldn't wait now because he'd come to town to kill old Colonel Sherburn, and his motto was, "Meat first and spoon vittles to top off on." He see me, and rode up and says:"Whar'd you come f'm boy? You prepared to die?" Then he rode on. I was scared, but a man says: "He don't mean nothing; he's always a-carryin' on like that when he's drunk. He's the best-naturedest old fool in Arkansaw
never hurt nobody, drunk no sober. — Mark Twain

Fifthly, I would do away with those great long compounded words; or require the speaker to deliver them in sections, with intermissions for refreshments. To wholly do away with them would be best, for ideas are more easily received and digested when they come one at a time than when they come in bulk. Intellectual food is like any other; it is pleasanter and more beneficial to take it with a spoon than with a shovel. — Mark Twain

If your mother tells you to do a thing, it is wrong to reply that you won't. It is better and more becoming to intimate that you will do as she bids you, and then afterward act quietly in the matter according to the dictates of your best judgment. — Mark Twain

Pity is for the living, envy is for the dead.
Death, the refuge, the solace, the best and kindliest and most prized friend and benefactor of the erring, the forsaken, the old and weary and broken of heart. — Mark Twain

It has taken a weary long time to persuade American Presbyterians to give up infant damnation and try to bear it the best they can. — Mark Twain

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

It is often the case that a man who can't tell a lie thinks he is the best judge of one. — Mark Twain

I can understand German as well as the maniac that invented it, but I talk it best through an interpreter. — Mark Twain

It were not best that we should all think alike; it is difference of opinion that makes horse races. — Mark Twain