1
After all these years, I see that I was mistaken about Eve in the beginning; it is better to live outside the Garden with her than inside it without her.Mark Twain
2
When you fish for love, bait with your heart, not your brain.Mark Twain
3
Good friends, good books, and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.Mark Twain
4
The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.Mark Twain
5
Don't part with your illusions. When they are gone you may still exist, but you have ceased to live.Mark Twain
6
The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.Mark Twain
7
Obscurity and a competence–that is the life that is best worth living.Mark Twain
8
Now and then we had a hope that if we lived and were good, God would permit us to be pirates.Mark Twain
9
I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.Mark Twain
10
Kindness is a language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see.Mark Twain
11
It's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog.Mark Twain
12
Any emotion, if it is sincere, is involuntary.Mark Twain
13
I've had a lot of worries in my life, most of which never happened.Mark Twain
14
Let us live so that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.Mark Twain
15
I wish I could make him understand that a loving good heart is riches enough, and that without it intellect is poverty.Mark Twain
16
There isn't time, so brief is life, for bickerings, apologies, heartburnings, callings to account. There is only time for loving, and but an instant, so to speak, for that.Mark Twain
17
Never put off till tomorrow what may be done day after tomorrow just as well.Mark Twain
18
Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.Mark Twain
19
I did not attend his funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it.Mark Twain
20
I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did. I said I didn’t know.Mark Twain
21
What would men be without women? Scarce, sir...mighty scarce.Mark Twain
22
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.Mark Twain
23
I've lived through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened.Mark Twain
24
The easy confidence with which I know another man's religion is folly teaches me to suspect that my own is also.Mark Twain
25
A clear conscience is the sure sign of a bad memory.Mark Twain
26
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.Mark Twain
27
April 1. This is the day upon which we are reminded of what we are on the other three hundred and sixty-four.Mark Twain
28
I didn't have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.Mark Twain
29
I have found out that there ain't no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than to travel with them.Mark Twain
30
I must have a prodigious amount of mind; it takes me as much as a week, sometimes, to make it up!Mark Twain
31
When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained.Mark Twain
32
Adam was but human–this explains it all. He did not want the apple for the apple's sake, he wanted it only because it was forbidden. The mistake was in not forbidding the serpent; then he would have eaten the serpent.Mark Twain
33
Eat a live frog first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day.Mark Twain
34
In the first place God made idiots. This was for practice. Then he made school boards.Mark Twain
35
What is Man? Man is a noisome bacillus whom Our Heavenly Father created because he was disappointed in the monkey.Mark Twain
36
A successful book is not made of what is in it, but what is left out of it.Mark Twain
37
The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.Mark Twain
38
Under certain circumstances, profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer."]Mark Twain
39
When I was younger, I could remember anything, whether it had happened or not; but my faculties are decaying now and soon I shall be so I cannot remember any but the things that never happened. It is sad to go to pieces like this but we all have to do it.Mark Twain
40
It is by the goodness of god that in our country we have those 3 unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them.Mark Twain
41
When red-headed people are above a certain social grade their hair is auburn.Mark Twain
42
I notice that you use plain, simple language, short words and brief sentences. That is the way to write English―it is the modern way and the best way. Stick to it; don't let fluff and flowers and verbosity creep in. When you catch an adjective, kill it. No, I don't mean utterly, but kill most of them―then the rest will be valuable. They weaken when they are close together. They give strength when they are wide apart. An adjective habit, or a wordy, diffuse, flowery habit, once fastened upon a person, is as hard to get rid of as any other vice.Mark Twain
43
If Christ were here there is one thing he would not be–a Christian.Mark Twain
44
Often it does seem such a pity that Noah and his party did not miss the boat.Mark Twain
45
The lack of money is the root of all evil.Mark Twain
46
Humor is mankind's greatest blessing.Mark Twain
47
A big leather-bound volume makes an ideal razorstrap. A thing book is useful to stick under a table with a broken caster to steady it. A large, flat atlas can be used to cover a window with a broken pane. And a thick, old-fashioned heavy book with a clasp is the finest thing in the world to throw at a noisy cat.Mark Twain
48
Familiarity breeds contempt and children.Mark Twain
49
There are those who scoff at the schoolboy, calling him frivolous andshallow: Yet it was the schoolboy who said 'Faith is believing what youknow ain't so'.Mark Twain
50
It usually takes me two or three days to prepare an impromptu speech.Mark Twain
51
Be respectful to your superiors, if you have any.Mark Twain
52
In Paris they just simply opened their eyes and stared when we spoke to them in French! We never did succeed in making those idiots understand their own language.Mark Twain
53
I was sorry to have my name mentioned as one of the great authors, because they have a sad habit of dying off. Chaucer is dead, Spencer is dead, so is Milton, so is Shakespeare, and I’m not feeling so well myself.Mark Twain
54
If we would learn what the human race really is at bottom, we need only observe it in election times.Mark Twain
55
Man was made at the end of the week's work when God was tired.Mark Twain
56
We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it and stop there lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot stove lid. She will never sit down on a hot stove lid again and that is well but also she will never sit down on a cold one anymore.Mark Twain
57
I take my only exercise acting as a pallbearer at the funerals of my friends who exercise regularly.Mark Twain
58
The source of all humor is not laughter, but sorrow.Mark Twain
59
There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.Mark Twain
60
I have lived a long life and had many troubles, most of which never happenedMark Twain
61
If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything.Mark Twain
62
A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.Mark Twain
63
Never tell the truth to people who are not worthy of it.Mark Twain
64
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't.Mark Twain
65
The Bible has noble poetry in it... and some good morals and a wealth of obscenity, and upwards of a thousand lies.Mark Twain
66
A man is never more truthful than when he acknowledges himself a liar.Mark Twain
67
Herodotus says, "Very few things happen at the right time, and the rest do not happen at all: the conscientious historian will correct these defects.Mark Twain
68
When ill luck begins, it does not come in sprinkles, but in showers.Mark Twain
69
If a cat sits on a hot stove, that cat won't sit on a hot stove again. That cat won't sit on a cold stove either. That cat just don't like stoves.Mark Twain
70
This nation is like all the others that have been spewed upon the earth--ready to shout for any cause that will tickle its vanity or fill its pocket. What a hell of a heaven it will be when they get all these hypocrites assembled there! - Letter to J. H. Twichell, 1/29/1901Mark Twain
71
Life would be infinitely happier if we could only be born at the age of eighty and gradually approach eighteen.Mark Twain
72
Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to reform (or pause and reflect).Mark Twain
73
In a good bookroom you feel in some mysterious way that you are absorbing the wisdom contained in all the books through your skin, without even opening them.Mark Twain
74
Behold, the fool saith, "Put not all thine eggs in the one basket" - which is but a matter of saying, "Scatter your money and your attention"; but the wise man saith, "Pull all your eggs in the one basket and - WATCH THAT BASKET." - Pudd'nhead Wilson's CalendarMark Twain
75
Be wise as a serpent and wary as a dove!Mark Twain
76
The perfection of wisdom, and the end of true philosophy is to proportion our wants to our possessions, our ambitions to our capacities, we will then be a happy and a virtuous people.Mark Twain
77
Human nature is all alike.Mark Twain
78
Yes - en I's rich now, come to look at it. I owns myself, en I's wuth eight hund'd dollars. I wisht I had de money, I wouldn' want no mo'.Mark Twain
79
I'll not go where there is any of that sort of thing going on, again. It's the sure way, and the only sure way;Mark Twain
80
A proof once established is better left so.Mark Twain
81
So I learned then, that gold in it's native state is but dull, unornamental stuff, and that only low-born metals excite the admiration of the ignorant with an ostentatious glitter. However, like the rest of the world, I still go underrating men of gold and glorifying men of mica. Commonplace human nature cannot rise above that.Mark Twain
82
Sanity and happiness are an impossible combination.Mark Twain
83
The best way to cheer yourself is to try to cheer someone else up.Mark Twain
84
But it is a blessed provision of nature that at times like these, as soon as a man's mercury has got down to a certain point there comes a revulsion, and he rallies. Hope springs up, and cheerfulness along with it, and then he is in good shape to do something for himself, if anything can be done.Mark Twain
85
Let us endeavor so to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.Mark Twain
86
I've never wished a man dead, but I have read some obituaries with great pleasure.Mark Twain
87
I lost Susy thirteen years ago; I lost her mother--her incomparable mother! --five and a half years ago; Clara has gone away to live in Europe and now I have lost Jean. How poor I am, who was once so rich! . Jean lies yonder, I sit here; we are strangers under our own roof; we kissed hands good-by at this door last night--and it was forever, we never suspecting it. She lies there, and I sit here--writing, busying myself, to keep my heart from breaking. How dazzling the sunshine is flooding the hills around! It is like a mockery. Seventy-four years ago twenty-four days. Seventy-four years old yesterday. Who can estimate my age today? .Mark Twain
88
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
89
Yes, King Edward VI lived only a few years, poor boy, but he lived them worthily.Mark Twain
90
I haven't any right to criticize books, and I don't do it except when I hate them. I often want to criticize Jane Austen, but her books madden me so that I can't conceal my frenzy from the reader; and therefore I have to stop every time I begin. Every time I read Pride and Prejudice I want to dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone.Mark Twain
91
Write what you know.Mark Twain
92
Don't say the old lady screamed. Bring her on and let her scream.Mark Twain
93
A man who is not born with the novel-writing gift has a troublesome time of it when he tries to build a novel. I know this from experience. He has no clear idea of his story; in fact he has no story. He merely has some people in his mind, and an incident or two, also a locality, and he trusts he can plunge those people into those incidents with interesting results. So he goes to work. To write a novel? No--that is a thought which comes later; in the beginning he is only proposing to tell a little tale, a very little tale, a six-page tale. But as it is a tale which he is not acquainted with, and can only find out what it is by listening as it goes along telling itself, it is more than apt to go on and on and on till it spreads itself into a book. I know about this, because it has happened to me so many times.Mark Twain
94
Wit is the sudden marriage of ideas which before their union were not perceived to have any relation.Mark Twain
95
The test of any good fiction is that you should care something for the characters; the good to succeed, the bad to fail. The trouble with most fiction is that you want them all to land in hell together, as quickly as possible.Mark Twain
96
One should never use exclamation points in writing. It is like laughing at your own joke.Mark Twain
97
To get the right word in the right place is a rare achievement. To condense the diffused light of a page of thought into the luminous flash of a single sentence, is worthy to rank as a prize composition just by itself... Anybody can have ideas--the difficulty is to express them without squandering a quire of paper on an idea that ought to be reduced to one glittering paragraph.Mark Twain
98
Which is him?" The grammar was faulty, maybe, but we could not know, then, that it would go in a book someday.Mark Twain
99
The dream vocabulary shaves meanings finer and closer than do the world's daytime dictionaries.Mark Twain
100
Man is the Reasoning Animal. Such is the claim. I think it is open to dispute. Indeed, my experiments have proven to me that he is the Unreasoning Animal.. In truth, man is incurably foolish. Simple things which other animals easily learn, he is incapable of learning. Among my experiments was this. In an hour I taught a cat and a dog to be friends. I put them in a cage. In another hour I taught them to be friends with a rabbit. In the course of two days I was able to add a fox, a goose, a squirrel and some doves. Finally a monkey. They lived together in peace; even affectionately. Next, in another cage I confined an Irish Catholic from Tipperary, and as soon as he seemed tame I added a Scotch Presbyterian from Aberdeen. Next a Turk from Constantinople; a Greek Christian from Crete; an Armenian; a Methodist from the wilds of Arkansas; a Buddhist from China; a Brahman from Benares. Finally, a Salvation Army Colonel from Wapping. Then I stayed away for two whole days. When I came back to note results, the cage of Higher Animals was all right, but in the other there was but a chaos of gory odds and ends of turbans and fezzes and plaids and bones and flesh--not a specimen left alive. These Reasoning Animals had disagreed on a theological detail and carried the matter to a Higher Court. .Mark Twain