Inspirational Quotes by Mark Twain (American Humorist)

Inspirational Quotations by Mark Twain (American Humorist)

Samuel Langhorne Clemens (1835–1910) was an American novelist and humorist. He took his nom de plume Mark Twain after the sounding calls of steamboatmen on the Mississippi River, on the banks of which he was brought up. The pseudonym is believed to have been a river navigation phrase meaning “two fathoms deep.”

Born in Florida, Missouri, Twain studied up to fifth grade and quit school when his father died. He supported his family first as a typesetter and later as a riverboat captain until the Civil War broke out in 1861. He then headed west, worked as a miner, and eventually became a journalist.

By 1866, Twain had gained national fame as a humorist and travel writer. He traveled to the Mediterranean and the Holy Land and subsequently published a comic account of his voyages and his American fellow-travelers, The Innocents Abroad (1869.)

Twain is much celebrated for three novels that are often used as academic texts, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876,) Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885,) and Pudd’nhead Wilson (1894,) all of which give a vivid evocation of frontier life in the Mississippi valley. Twain’s writings are characterized by his natural wit, social criticism, and a keen understanding of human nature. He toured widely as a renowned public speaker and continued to write until his death of a heart attack.

Twain’s later books, such as The Mysterious Stranger (1916,) are often satirical and cynical, possibly in reaction to the conservative social milieu of his wife. He spent his last years dictating his autobiography—which had been the subject of many of his writing.

More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Mark Twain

Inspirational Quotes by Mark Twain (American Humorist)

Where a blood relation sobs, an intimate friend should choke up, a distant acquaintance should sigh, a stranger should merely fumble sympathetically with his handkerchief.
—Mark Twain

A man’s house burns down. The smoking wreckage represents only a ruined home that was dear through years of use and pleasant associations. By and by, as the days and weeks go on, first he misses this, then that, then the other thing. And when he casts about for it he finds that it was in that house. Always it is an essential—there was but one of its kind. It cannot be replaced. It was in that house. It is irrevocably lost. It will be years before the tale of lost essentials is complete, and not till then can he truly know the magnitude of his disaster.
—Mark Twain
Topics: Grief, Grieving, Bereavement

One may make their house a palace of sham, or they can make it a home, a refuge.
—Mark Twain
Topics: Home

I never could keep a promise. I do not blame myself for this weakness, because the fault must lie in my physical organization. It is likely that such a very liberal amount of space was given to the organ which enables me to make promises that the organ which should enable me to keep them was crowded out. But I grieve not. I like no half-way things. I had rather have one faculty nobly developed than two faculties of mere ordinary capacity.
—Mark Twain
Topics: Promises

I know all those people. I have friendly, social, and criminal relations with the whole lot of them.
—Mark Twain
Topics: Taxation, Taxes

A habit cannot be tossed out the window; it must be coaxed down the stairs a step at a time.
—Mark Twain
Topics: Habit, Habits

Of the delights of this world, man cares most for sexual intercourse, yet he has left it out of his heaven.
—Mark Twain
Topics: Sex, World, Light

We have a criminal jury system which is superior to any in the world; and its efficiency is only marred by the difficulty of finding twelve men every day who don’t know anything and can’t read.
—Mark Twain
Topics: Law, Justice

Familiarity breeds contempt. How accurate that is. The reason we hold truth in such respect is because we have so little opportunity to get familiar with it.
—Mark Twain

We never become really and genuinely our entire and honest selves until we are dead—and not then until we have been dead years and years. People ought to start dead and then they would be honest so much earlier.
—Mark Twain
Topics: Nature, Death

Advertisements contain the only truths to be relied on in a newspaper.
—Mark Twain
Topics: Advertising

From his cradle to the grave, a man never does a single thing which has any first and foremost object save one—to secure peace of mind, spiritual comfort, for himself.
—Mark Twain
Topics: Reason, Aspirations

Laughter is the greatest weapon that we humans possess and it’s the one we use the least.
—Mark Twain
Topics: Laughter

We like a man to come right out and say what he thinks, if we agree with him.
—Mark Twain
Topics: Thought, Thoughts

There are two times in a man’s life when he shouldn’t speculate: when he can afford to and when he can’t.
—Mark Twain
Topics: Wealth, Assumptions

Drag your thoughts away from your troubles… by the ears, by the heels, or any other way you can manage it.
—Mark Twain
Topics: Worry, Trouble

It is a good and gentle religion, but inconvenient.
—Mark Twain
Topics: Religion

Prosperity is the surest breeder of insolence I know.
—Mark Twain
Topics: Prosperity, Success & Failure

If the desire to kill and the opportunity to kill came always together, who would escape hanging?
—Mark Twain
Topics: Murder, Integrity

Adam and Eve had many advantages, but the principal one was that they escaped teething.
—Mark Twain

It is better to deserve honors and not have them than to have them and not deserve them.
—Mark Twain
Topics: Character, Honor

It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world, and moral courage so rare.
—Mark Twain
Topics: Integrity, Courage, Bravery, Curiosity

We have not all had the good fortune to be ladies. We have not all been generals, or poets, or statesmen; but when the toast works down to the babies, we stand on common ground.
—Mark Twain
Topics: Babies, Family

Be virtuous and you will be eccentric.
—Mark Twain
Topics: Virtue, Virtues

I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did. I said I didn’t know.
—Mark Twain

We are discreet sheep; we wait to see how the drove is going, and then go with the drove.
—Mark Twain
Topics: Conformity

Biographies are but the clothes and buttons of the man. The biography of the man himself cannot be written.
—Mark Twain
Topics: Self-Discovery, Legacy, Biography

It is my belief that nearly any invented quotation, played with confidence, stands a good chance to deceive.
—Mark Twain

One mustn’t criticize other people on grounds where he can’t stand perpendicular himself.
—Mark Twain
Topics: Criticism

Worrying about something is like paying interest on a debt you don’t even know if you owe.
—Mark Twain