Quotes & Sayings About Twain

Yes, even I am dishonest. Not in many ways, but in some. Forty-one, I think it is. — Mark Twain

Names are not always what they seem. — Mark Twain

Let your joy be unconfined! — Mark Twain

The secret to success: find out where people are going and get there first — Mark Twain

A discriminating irreverence is the creator and protector of human liberty. — Mark Twain

It is sound statesmanship to add two battleships every time our neighbour adds one and two stories to our skyscrapers every time he piles a new one on top of his to threaten our light. There is no limit to this soundness but the sky. — Mark Twain

I have traveled more than anyone else, and I have noticed that even the angels speak English with an accent. — Mark Twain

I have done more for San Francisco than any of its old residents. Since I left there it has increased in population fully 300,000. I could have done more - I could have gone earlier - it was suggested. — Mark Twain

When you want genuine music
music that will come right home to you like a bad quarter, suffuse your system like strychnine whisky, go right through you like Brandreth's pills, ramify your whole constitution like the measles, and break out on your hide like the pin-feather pimples on a picked goose,
when you want all this, just smash your piano, and invoke the glory-beaming banjo! — Mark Twain

Always - from all companies, high or low - she went forth richer in honor and esteem than when she came. — Mark Twain

appeared in any form. In it my purpose has been to present — Mark Twain

If there is one thing that will make a man peculiarly and insufferable self-conceited, it is to have his stomach behave itself, the first day at sea, when nearly all his comrades are seasick. — Mark Twain

By his father he is English, by his mother he is Americanto my mind the blend which makes the perfect man. — Mark Twain

I speak now, of course, in the supposition that the gentle reader has not been abroad, and therefore is not already a consummate ass. If the case be otherwise, I beg his pardon and extend to him the cordial hand of fellowship and call him brother. I shall always delight to meet an ass after my own heart when I shall have finished my travels. — Mark Twain

I'm glad I did it, partly because it was worth it, but mostly because I shall never have to do it again — Mark Twain

Love comes to those who still hope even though they've been disappointed, to those who still believe even though they've been betrayed, to those who still love even though they've been hurt before ... Anonymous author — Shania Twain

If you will notice, there is seldom a telegram in a paper which fails to show up one or more members & beneficiaries of our Civilization as promenading with his shirt-tail up & the rest of his regalia in the wash. — Mark Twain

Never let school get in the way of your education.
Mark Twain — Evelyn Krieger

A street in Constantinople is a picture which one ought to see once - not oftener. — Mark Twain

Human nature is all alike. — Mark Twain

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. — Mark Twain

In this life, Satan, but in another? We shall meet in another, surely?"
Then, all tranquilly and soberly, he made the strange answer, "There is no other. — Mark Twain

A thing long expected takes the form of the unexpected when at last it comes. — Mark Twain

God created war so that Americans would learn geography. — Mark Twain

During the gold rush its a good time to be in the pick and shovel business — Mark Twain

A sense of humor is the one thing no one will admit to not having. — Mark Twain

The Book of Mormon is chloroform in print — Mark Twain

Morals are not the important thing-nor enlightenment-nor civilization. A man can do absolutely well without them, but he can't do without something to eat. The supremest thing is the need of the body, not of the mind and spirit. — Mark Twain

The true charm of pedestrianism does not lie in the walking, or in the scenery, but in the talking. The walking is good to time the movement of the tongue by, and to keep the blood and the brain stirred up and active; the scenery and the woodsy smells are good to bear in upon a man an unconscious and unobtrusive charm and solace to eye and soul and sense; but the supreme pleasure comes from the talk. — Mark Twain

We have infinite trouble in solving man-made mysteries; it is only when we set out to discover "the secret of God" that our difficulties disappear. — Mark Twain

I know grammar by ear only, not by note, not by the rules. — Mark Twain

Never tell a lie-except for practice. — Mark Twain

Facts are stubborn, but statistics are more pliable. — Mark Twain

The true and lasting genius of humour does not drag you thus to boxes labelled 'pathos,' 'humour,' and show you all the mechanism of the inimitable puppets that are going to perform. How I used to laugh at Simon Tapperwit, and the Wellers, and a host more! But I can't do it now somehow; and time, it seems to me, is the true test of humour. It must be antiseptic. — Mark Twain

All I care to know about a man is that he is a human being ... he can't be any worse. — Mark Twain

I am not an economist. I am an honest man! — Mark Twain

I DO know lots of things that I don't remember, and remember lots of things that I don't know. It's so with every educated person. — Mark Twain

When boyhood's fire was in my blood
I read of ancient freemen
Of Greece and Rome who bravely stood
Three hundred men and three men

And then I prayed I yet might see
Our fetters rent in twain
And Ireland long a province be
A nation once again — Thomas Osborne Davis

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

Benaras is older than history, older than tradition, older even than legend, and looks twice as old as all of them put together! — Mark Twain

It is hopeless for the occasional visitor to try to keep up with Chicago-she outgrows his prophecies faster than he can make them. She is always a novelty; for she is never the Chicago you saw when you passed through the last time. — Mark Twain

This creature's career could produce but one result, and it speedily followed. Boy after boy managed to get on the river. The minister's son became an engineer. The doctor's and the post-master's sons became 'mud clerks;' the wholesale liquor dealer's son became a barkeeper on a boat; four sons of the chief merchant, and two sons of the county judge, became pilots. Pilot was the grandest position of all. The pilot, even in those days of trivial wages, had a princely salary - from a hundred and fifty to two hundred and fifty dollars a month, and no board to pay. Two months of his wages would pay a preacher's salary for a year. Now some of us were left disconsolate. We could not get on the river - at least our parents would not let us. — Mark Twain

I have only one moral precept; never smoke more than five cigars at a time. — Mark Twain

Ours is a terrible religion. The fleets of the world could swim in spacious comfort in the innocent blood it has spilt. — Mark Twain

You aim for the palace and get drowned in the sewer. — Mark Twain

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

Well, Judge Thatcher he took it and put it out at interest, and it fetched us a dollar a day apiece all the year round - more than a body could tell what to do with. — Mark Twain

We grant God the possession of all the qualities of mind except the one that keeps the others healthy; that watches over their dignity; that focuses their vision true
humor. — Mark Twain

Public opinion is held in reverence. It settles everything. Some think it is the voice of God. — Mark Twain

We did not oversleep at St. Nicholas. The church-bell began to ring at four-thirty in the morning, and from the length of time it continued to ring I judged that it takes the Swiss sinner a good while to get the invitation through his head. — Mark Twain

In our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either. — Mark Twain

Today the same thing over. I've got it up the tree again. — Mark Twain

None but the dead are permitted to tell the truth. — Mark Twain

I am technically "boss" of the family which I am carrying along-but I am grateful to know that it is only technically - that the real authority rests on the other side of the house. It is placed there by a beneficent Providence, who foresaw before I was born, or, if he did not, he has found it out since - that I am not in any way qualified to travel alone. — Mark Twain

The frankest and freest and privatest product of the human mind and heart is a love letter ... — Mark Twain

Nom de Plume uses the device of the pseudonym to unite the likes of Charlotte Bronte, Mark Twain, Fernando Pessoa, and Patricia Highsmith into a cohesive yet highly idiosyncratic literary history. Each page affords sparkling facts and valuable insights onto the manufacturing of books and reputations, the keeping and revealing of secrets, the vagaries of private life and public opinion, and the eternally mysterious, often tormented interface between life and literature. — Elif Batuman

So the tiresome minutes and decades of minutes dragged away, until at last our tense forms filmed over with a dulled consciousness, — Mark Twain

DECEMBER 26TH. The dog came to see me at eight o'clock this morning. He was very affectionate, poor orphan! My room will be his quarters hereafter. — Mark Twain

Every man is wholly honest to himself and to God, but not to any one else. — Mark Twain

Why not go out on a limb? Isn't that where the fruit is? — Frank Scully

Meat first, and spoon vittles to top off on. — Mark Twain

In religion, India is the only millionaire ... the One land that all men desire to see, and having seen once, by even a glimpse, would not give that glimpse for all the shows of all the rest of the globe combined. — Mark Twain

The easy confidence with which I know another man's religion is folly teaches me to suspect that my own is also. — Mark Twain

The English youth's face simply showed a lively surprise, but nothing more. He went swinging along valleyward again, as if he did not know he had just swindled a coroner — Mark Twain

Give a man a reputation as an early riser and he can sleep 'til noon. — Mark Twain

The cayote is a living, breathing allegory of Want. He is always hungry. He is always poor, out of luck and friendless. The meanest creatures despise him, and even the fleas would desert him for a velocipede. — Mark Twain

I am content to be a bric-a-bracker and a Ceramiker. — Mark Twain

The dictionary is the only place where success comes before work. - Mark Twain — Mark Twain

The observance of Thanksgiving Day-as a function-has become general of late years. The Thankfulness is not so general. This is natural. Two-thirds of the nation have always had hard luck and a hard time during the year, and this has a calming effect upon their enthusiasm. — Mark Twain

Who knows, he may grow up to be President someday, unless they hang him first!
Aunt Polly about Tom Sawyer — Mark Twain

When a man loves cats, I am his friend and comrade, without further introduction. — 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

Ignorant people think it is the noise which fighting cats make that is so aggravating, but it ain't so; it is the sickening grammar that they use. — Mark Twain

What dost thou know of suffering and oppression! I and my people know, but not thou. — 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

I have never tried, in even one single little instance, to help cultivate the cultivated classes. I was not equipped for it either by native gifts or training. And I never had any ambition in that direction, but always hunted for bigger game
the masses. - Mark Twain, a Biography — Mark Twain

Humor, to be comprehensible to anybody, must be built upon a foundation with which he is familiar. If he can't see the foundation the superstructure is to him merely a freak
like the Flatiron building without any visible means of support
something that ought to be arrested. — Mark Twain

When everything goes without a hitch, where's the challenge, the opportunity to find out what you're made of? — Shania Twain

He would now have comprehended that work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do, and that play consists of whaterver a body is not obliged to do. And this would help him to understand why construcing artificial flowers or performing on a tread-mill, is work, whilst rolling nine-pins or climbing Mont Blanc is only amusement. There are wealthy gentlemen in England who drive four-horse passenger-coaches twenty or thirty miles on a daily line, in the summer, because the privilege costs them considerable money; but if they were offered wages for the service that would turn it into work, then they would resign. — Mark Twain

I live with past called "DeYtH" ( a guy who is famous with cs 1.6 maps, mods, photoshop and e.t.c. and with my now "Mark Tven", you probably said "Oh,Oh I know this name this guy was a writer..." it's not taken the guy was called Mark Twain, I'm Tven, famous with awesome maps and interesting updates of cs 1.6 maps. To don't forget, I'm famous with my nick of past with writting. — Deyth Banger

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

A man who goes around with a prophecy-gun ought never to get discouraged: if he will keep up his heart and fire at everything he sees, he is bound to hit something by and by. — Mark Twain

They growled a response and went on digging. For some time there was no noise but the grating sound of the spades discharging their freight of mould and gravel. It was very monotonous. Finally a spade struck upon the coffin with a dull woody accent, and within another minute or two the men had hoisted it out on the ground. They pried off the lid with their shovels, got out the body and dumped it rudely on the ground. The moon drifted from behind the clouds and exposed the pallid face. The barrow was got ready and the corpse placed on it, covered with a blanket, and bound to its place with the rope. Potter took out a large spring-knife and cut off the dangling end of the rope and then said: "Now the cussed thing's ready, Sawbones, and you'll just out with another five, or here she stays. — Mark Twain

Come! surely you've got a heart hidden away somewhere; open it up; give it air; show at least some little corner of it. — Mark Twain

I'll always be sad that my marriage ended. — Shania Twain

Ah, that shows you the power of music, that magician of magician, who lifts his wand and says his mysterious word and all things real pass away and the phantoms of your mind walk before you clothed in flesh. — Mark Twain

I will now claim - until dispossesed - that I was the first person in the world to apply the typewriter to literature ... The early machine was full of caprices, full of defects- devilish ones. It had as many immoralities as the machine of today has virtues. After a year or two I found that it was degrading my character, so I thought I would give it to Howells ... He took it home to Boston, and my morals began to improve, but his have never recovered. — Mark Twain

What marriage is to morality, a properly conducted licensed liquor traffic is to sobriety. — Mark Twain

Imagine, if you will, that I am an idiot. Then, imagine that I am also a Congressman. But, alas, I repeat myself. — Mark Twain

You cannot have all chiefs; you gotta have Indians too.
Perfect love cannot be without equality.
A friend to everybody and to nobody is the same thing.
We are all alike, on the inside. — Mark Twain

The mere mention of a witch was almost enough to frighten us out of our wits. This was natural enough, because of late years there were more kinds of witches than there used to be; in old times it had been only old women, but of late years they were of all ages - even children of eight and nine; it was getting so that anybody might turn out to be a familiar of the Devil - age and sex hadn't anything to do with it. In our little region we had tried to extirpate the witches, but the more of them we burned the more of the breed rose up in their places. — Mark Twain

You need not expect to get your book right the first time. Go to work and revamp or rewrite it. God only exhibits his thunder and lightning at intervals, and so they always command attention. These are God's adjectives. You thunder and lightning too much; the reader ceases to get under the bed, by and by. — Mark Twain

A raft or a scow, you know; and maybe you could hear a fiddle or a song coming over from one of them crafts. It's lovely to live on a raft. We had the sky up there, all speckled with stars, and we used to lay on our backs and look up at them, — Mark Twain

I have spent most of my time worrying about things that have never happened. Worrying is not an action! In fact, it is action that alleviates concern and dissipates worries. Take more actions when you feel that worry is creeping in to steal your time. It need not be a huge action, any action in the direction you want to go will do. — Mark Twain

You perceive, now, that these things are all impossible except in a dream. You perceive that they are pure and puerile insanities, the silly creations of an imagination that is not conscious of its freaks - in a word, that they are a dream, and you the maker of it. The dream-marks are all present; you should have recognized them earlier. — Mark Twain

If I had more time, I would have written less. — Mark Twain

We made many trips to the lake after that, and had many a hairbreadth escape and bloodcurdling adventure which will never be recorded in any history. — Mark Twain

I know the look of an apple that is roasting and sizzling on the hearth on a winter's evening, and I know the comfort that comes of eating it hot, along with some sugar and a drench of cream ... I know how the nuts taken in conjunction with winter apples, cider, and doughnuts, make old people's tales and old jokes sound fresh and crisp and enchanting. — Mark Twain

Even when life hits you like a Mack truck that's come out of nowhere, there is still a chance that you will survive, and although the road to recover may be slow, long, and even permanent, this doesn't mean you can't enjoy the rest of your life and be happy again. — Shania Twain

In Syria, once, at the head-waters of the Jordan, a camel took charge of my overcoat while the tents were being pitched, and examined it with a critical eye, all over, with as much interest as if he had an idea of getting one made like it; and then, after he was done figuring on it as an article of apparel, he began to contemplate it as an article of diet. He put his foot on it, and lifted one of the sleeves out with his teeth, and chewed and chewed at it, gradually taking it in, and all the while opening and closing his eyes in a kind of religious ecstasy, as if he had never tasted anything as good as — Mark Twain