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Inspirational Quotations

by RightAttitudes.com

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

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Inspirational Quotes by Mark Twain (American Humorist)

All say, “How hard it is that we have to die” — a strange complaint to come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
—Mark Twain
Topics: People, Live, Death, Dying

October. This is one of the peculiarly dangerous months to speculate in stocks. The others are July, January, September, April, November, May, March, June, December, August, and February.
—Mark Twain
Topics: Difficulty, Money, Vision, Economics

How little a thing can make us happy when we fell that we have earned it.
—Mark Twain

Always do right. This will gratify some people, and astonish the rest.
—Mark Twain

Habit is habit, and not to be flung out of the window by any man, but coaxed downstairs one step at a time.
—Mark Twain
Topics: Habit

It isn’t safe to sit in judgment upon another person’s illusion when you are not on the inside. While you are thinking it is a dream, he may be knowing it is a planet.
—Mark Twain

Nothing so needs reforming as other people’s habits.
—Mark Twain
Topics: Reform, Correction, Habit, Hypocrisy

Truth is mighty and will prevail. There is nothing the matter with this, except that it ain’t so.
—Mark Twain
Topics: Honesty

So I became a newspaperman. I hated to do it but I couldnt find honest employment.
—Mark Twain

Grief can take care of itself; but to get the full value of a joy you must have somebody to divide it with.
—Mark Twain
Topics: Friendship, Happiness

Always do right. This will gratify some people, and astonish the rest.
—Mark Twain
Topics: Character, Action, Goodness, Virtue, Excellence, Kindness

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

A powerful agent is the right word. Whenever we come upon one of those intensely right words in a book or a newspaper the resulting effect is physical as well as spiritual, and electrically prompt.
—Mark Twain

Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example.
—Mark Twain

Even popularity can be overdone. In Rome, along at first, you are full of regrets that Michelangelo dies; but by and by, you only regret that you didn’t see him do it.
—Mark Twain

When we remember that we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained.
—Mark Twain

Praise is well, compliment is well, but affection-that is the last and most precious reward that any man can win, whether by character or achievement.
—Mark Twain
Topics: Love

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

We are always too busy for our children; we never give them the time or interest they deserve. We lavish gifts upon them; but the most precious gift, our personal association, which means so much to them, we give grudgingly.
—Mark Twain
Topics: Family

I don’t think there ever was a lazy man in this world. Every man has some sort of gift, and he prizes that gift beyond all others. I don’t care what it is. But whatever it is, he takes a native delight in exploiting that gift, and you will find it is difficult to beguile him away from it.
—Mark Twain

When angry, count to four; when very angry, swear.
—Mark Twain
Topics: Anger

On with the dance, let joy be unconfined is my motto, whether there’s a dance to dance or any joy to unconfine.
—Mark Twain
Topics: Dance

A jay hasnt got any more principle than a Congressman. A jay will lie, a jay will steal, a jay will deceive, a jay will betray; and four times out of five, a jay will go back on his solemnest promise.
—Mark Twain

Work and play are words used to describe the same thing under differing conditions.
—Mark Twain
Topics: Work

The human race has one really effective weapon, and that is laughter.
—Mark Twain
Topics: Laughter

Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear — not absence of fear. Except a creature be part coward, it is not a compliment to say it is brave; it is merely a loose misapplication of the word. Consider the flea!-incomparably the bravest of all the creatures of God, if ignorance of fear were courage. Whether you are asleep or awake he will attack you, caring nothing for the fact that in bulk and strength you are to him as are the massed armies of the earth to a sucking child; he lives both day and night and all days and nights in the very lap of peril and the immediate presence of death, and yet is no more afraid than is the man who walks the streets of a city that was threatened by an earthquake ten centuries before. When we speak of Clive, Nelson, and Putnam as men who didn’t know what fear was,” we ought always to add the flea-and put him at the head of the procession.”
—Mark Twain
Topics: Fear, Courage, Bravery, Mastery

We do not deal much in facts when we are contemplating ourselves.
—Mark Twain
Topics: Self-Discovery

As to the Adjective: when in doubt, strike it out.
—Mark Twain

There is no character, howsoever good and fine, but it can be destroyed by ridicule, howsoever poor and witless. Observe the ass, for instance: his character is about perfect, he is the choicest spirit among all the humbler animals, yet see what ridicule has brought him to. Instead of feeling complimented when we are called an ass, we are left in doubt.
—Mark Twain

The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can’t read them.
—Mark Twain

Behold, the fool saith, “Put not all thine eggs in the one basket” – which is but a manner of saying, “Scatter your money and your attention”; but the wise man saith, “Put all your eggs in the one basket and – WATCH THAT BASKET.”
—Mark Twain

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that 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.
—Mark Twain

Even the clearest and most perfect circumstantial evidence is likely to be at fault, after all, and therefore ought to be received with great caution. Take the case of any pencil, sharpened by any woman: if you have witness, you will find she did it with a knife; but if you take simply the aspect of the pencil, you will say she did it with her teeth.
—Mark Twain

A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.
—Mark Twain
Topics: Honesty

Each man must for himself alone decide what is right and what is wrong, which course is patriotic and which isn’t. You cannot shirk this and be a man. To decide against your conviction is to be an unqualified and inexcusable traitor, both to yourself and to your country, let men label you as they may.
—Mark Twain
Topics: Self-reliance, Decisions, Confidence, Integrity

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

Always do right. It will please some people and astonish the rest.
—Mark Twain

History, although sometimes made up of the few acts of the great, is more often shaped by the many acts of the small.
—Mark Twain
Topics: History

Say the report is exaggerated.
—Mark Twain

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

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