Quotes by
Mark Twain |
1835-1910 , American writer
Samuel Langhorne Clemens, known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American writer, humorist, entrepreneur, publisher and lecturer. Among his novels are The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and its sequel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885), the latter often called “The Great American Novel.”. | 72 quotes | 22,613 visits |
Quotations
| • | Never argue with stupid people, they will drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience. 118 |
| • | A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes. 53 |
| • | It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt. 44 |
| • | If you tell the truth you don't have to remember anything. 37 |
| • | Suppose you were an idiot and suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself. 35 |
| • | If voting made any difference they wouldn't let us do it. 34 |
| • | When in doubt, tell the truth. 21 |
| • | Never argue with a fool, onlookers may not be able to tell the difference. 20 |
| • | Anyone who stops learning is old, whether twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young. The greatest thing you can do is keep your mind young. 17 |
| • | The Bible has noble poetry in it... and some good morals and a wealth of obscenity, and upwards of a thousand lies. 17 |
| • | It's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog. 14 |
| • | The worst loneliness is to not be comfortable with yourself. 14 |
| • | When in doubt tell the truth. It will confound your enemies and astound your friends. 14 |
| • | Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company. 12 |
| • | Good judgment is the result of experience and experience the result of bad judgment. 12 |
| • | Most people are bothered by those passages of Scripture they do not understand, but the passages that bother me are those I do understand. 11 |
| • | The right word may be effective, but no word was ever as effective as a rightly timed pause. 11 |
| • | Honesty: The best of all the lost arts. 11 |
| • | Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover. 11 |
| • | 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. 10 |
| • | I have never let my schooling interfere with my education. 10 |
| • | The best way to cheer yourself is to try to cheer someone else up. 10 |
| • | Whenever you find that you are on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect. 10 |
| • | The rule is perfect: in all matters of opinion our adversaries are insane. 10 |
| • | Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter. 10 |
| • | Civilization is a limitless multiplication of unnecessary necessaries. 10 |
| • | There are several good protections against temptations, but the surest is cowardice. 9 |
| • | Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear - not absence of fear. 9 |
| • | Explaining humor is a lot like dissecting a frog, you learn a lot in the process, but in the end you kill it. 9 |
| • | Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn't. 8 |
| • | In his private heart no man respects himself. 8 |
| • | When I was younger, I could remember anything, whether it had happened or not. 8 |
| • | Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example. 8 |
| • | What gets us into trouble is not what we don't know. It's what we know for sure that just ain't so. 8 |
| • | Of the delights of this world, man cares most for sexual intercourse yet he has left it out of his
heaven. 8 |
| • | You cannot depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus. 6 |
| • | A man's character may be learned from the adjectives which he habitually uses in conversation. 6 |
| • | Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest. 5 |
| • | The human race has one really effective weapon, and that is laughter. 5 |
| • | When a person cannot deceive himself the chances are against his being able to deceive other people. 5 |
| • | History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme. 5 |
| • | Any emotion, if it is sincere, is involuntary. 5 |
| • | The secret source of humor is not joy but sorrow; there is no humor in heaven. 5 |
| • | Never be haughty to the humble, never be humble to the haughty. 5 |
| • | I have been complimented many times and they always embarrass me; I always feel that they have not said enough. 5 |
| • | The easy confidence with which I know another man's religion is folly teaches me to suspect that my own is also. 5 |
| • | I have been through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened. 4 |
| • | Man is the only animal that Blushes. Or needs to. 4 |
| • | Good friends, good books, and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life. 4 |
| • | The most interesting information come from children, for they tell all they know and then stop. 4 |
| • | Noise proves nothing. Often a hen who has laid an egg cackles as if she had laid an asteroid. 4 |
| • | Let us swear while we may, for in heaven it will not be allowed. 4 |
| • | The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time. 4 |
| • | Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please. 3 |
| • | Grief can take care of itself, but to get the full value of a joy you must have somebody to divide it with. 3 |
| • | The man who doesn't read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them. 3 |
| • | Writing is easy. All you have to do is cross out the wrong words. 3 |
| • | It's easy to make friends, but hard to get rid of them. 3 |
| • | There are three things men can do with women: love them, suffer them, or turn them into literature. 3 |
| • | Definition of a classic — something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read. 3 |
| • | Thunder is good, thunder is impressive; but it is lightning that does the work. 3 |
| • | Wrinkles should merely indicate where the smiles have been. 2 |
| • | When angry, count four. When very angry, swear. 2 |
| • | Action speaks louder than words but not nearly as often. 2 |
Funny Quotes
| • | If Christ were here, there is one thing he would not be—a Christian. 23 |
| • | Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason. 17 |
| • | 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. 8 |
| • | Never put off until tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow. 7 |
| • | The report of my death was an exaggeration. 6 |
| • | Giving up smoking is the easiest thing in the world. I know because I've done it thousands of times. 6 |
| • | In Paris they simply stared when I spoke to them in French; I never did succeed in making those idiots understand their language. 5 |
| • | I do not like work even when someone else is doing it. 3 |
