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)

His ignorance covers the world like a blanket, and there’s scarcely a hole in it anywhere
—Mark Twain
Topics: Ignorance

France has neither winter nor summer nor morals. Apart from these drawbacks it is a fine country.
—Mark Twain
Topics: Nation, Nationalism, Nationality, Nations

I am admonished in many ways that time is pushing me inexorably along. I am approaching the threshold of age; in 1977 I shall be 142. This is no time to be flitting about the earth. I must cease from the activities proper to youth and begin to take on the dignities and gravities and inertia proper to that season of honorable senility which is on its way.
—Mark Twain
Topics: Age

The trouble with the world is not that people know too little, but that they know so many things that ain’t so.
—Mark Twain
Topics: Knowledge, Virtues

Say the report is exaggerated.
—Mark Twain

It takes your enemy and your friend, working together, to hurt you to the heart; the one to slander you and the other to get the news to you.
—Mark Twain
Topics: Slander, Enemies, Insults

Intellectual “work” is misnamed; it is a pleasure, a dissipation, and is its own highest reward.
—Mark Twain
Topics: Work

Warm summer sun, shine kindly here. Warm southern wind, blow softly here. Green sod above, lie light, lie light. Good night, dear Heart, Good night, good night.
—Mark Twain
Topics: Nature

There are several good protections against temptations, but the surest is cowardice.
—Mark Twain
Topics: Coward, Fear, Temptation, Cowardice

Do your duty today and repent tomorrow
—Mark Twain
Topics: Duty

I am opposed to millionaires, but it would be dangerous to offer me the position.
—Mark Twain
Topics: Wealth, Money

Only a government that is rich and safe can afford to be a democracy, for democracy is the most expensive and nefarious kind of government ever heard of on earth
—Mark Twain
Topics: Government

Be careful when reading health books; you may die of a misprint.
—Mark Twain
Topics: Health

What a good thing Adam had. When he said a good thing, he knew nobody had said it before.
—Mark Twain
Topics: Plagiarism, Writing

Accident is the name of the greatest of all inventors.
—Mark Twain
Topics: Invention, Luck, Fortune

Prophesy is a good line of business, but it is full of risks.
—Mark Twain
Topics: Business

Humor is tragedy plus time.
—Mark Twain
Topics: Humor

Yes, Agassiz does recommend authors to eat fish, because the phosphorus in it makes brain. So far you are correct. But I cannot help you to a decision about the amount you need to eat – at least, not with certainty. If the specimen composition you send is about your fair usual average, I should judge that a couple of whales would be all you would want for the present. Not the largest kind, but simply good middling-sized whales.
—Mark Twain
Topics: Insults

The irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired.
—Mark Twain
Topics: Romance

A marriage…makes of two fractional
lives a whole;
it gives to two purposeless lives
a work, and doubles the strength
of each to perform it;
it gives to two
questioning natures
a reason for living,
and something to live for;
it will give a new gladness
to the sunshine,
a new fragrance to the flowers,
a new beauty to the earth,
and a new mystery to life.
—Mark Twain

Education consists mainly in what we have unlearned.
—Mark Twain
Topics: Education

Let me make the superstitions of a nation and I care not who makes its laws or its songs either.
—Mark Twain
Topics: Superstition

We must annex those people. We can afflict them with our wise and beneficent government. We can introduce the novelty of thieves, all the way up from street-car pickpockets to municipal robbers and Government defaulters, and show them how amusing it is to arrest them and try them and then turn them loose—some for cash and some for “political influence.” We can make them ashamed of their simple and primitive justice. We can make that little bunch of sleepy islands the hottest corner on earth, and array it in the moral splendor of our high and holy civilization. Annexation is what the poor islanders need. “Shall we to men benighted, the lamp of life deny?”
—Mark Twain
Topics: Wilderness

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: Integrity, Confidence, Self-reliance, Decisions

I never write metropolis for seven cents because I can get the same price for city. I never write policeman because I can get the same money for cop.
—Mark Twain
Topics: Money

There are many scapegoats for our sins, but the most popular is providence.
—Mark Twain
Topics: Sin, God

When the doctrine of allegiance to party can utterly up-end a man’s moral constitution and make a temporary fool of him besides, what excuse are you going to offer for preaching it, teaching it, extending it, perpetuating it? Shall you say, the best good of the country demands allegiance to party? Shall you also say it demands that a man kick his truth and his conscience into the gutter, and become a mouthing lunatic, besides?
—Mark Twain
Topics: Politics

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

Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it.
—Mark Twain
Topics: Patriotism

It was wonderful to find America, but it would have been more wonderful to miss it.
—Mark Twain
Topics: America

A crank is someone with a new idea—until it catches on.
—Mark Twain
Topics: Ideas

What is there that confers the noblest delight? What is that which swells a man’s breast with pride above that which any other experience can bring to him? Discovery! To know that you are walking where none others have walked; that you are beholding what human eye has not seen before; that you are breathing a virgin atmosphere. To give birth to an idea, to discover a great thought—an intellectual nugget, right under the dust of a field that many a brain-plough had gone over before. To find a new planet, to invent a new hinge, to find a way to make the lightning carry your messages. To be the first—that is the idea.
—Mark Twain
Topics: Discovery

In Nevada, for a time, the lawyer, the editor, the banker, the chief desperado, the chief gambler, and the saloon-keeper occupied the same level of society, and it was the highest.
—Mark Twain
Topics: Society

There is nothing you can say in answer to a compliment. I have been complimented myself a great many times, and they always embarrass me—I always feel that they have not said enough.
—Mark Twain
Topics: Compliments, Praise

Remark of Dr. Baldwin’s, concerning upstarts: We don’t care to eat toadstools that think they are truffles.
—Mark Twain

But that’s always the way; it don’t make no difference whether you do right or wrong, a person’s conscience ain’t got no sense, and just goes for him anyway. If I had a yaller dog that didn’t know no more than a person’s conscience does I would pison him. It takes up more room than all the rest of a person’s insides, and yet ain’t no good, nohow.
—Mark Twain
Topics: Integrity

Never let formal education get in the way of your learning.
—Mark Twain
Topics: Learning

There are only two forces that can carry light to all the corners of the globe… the sun in the heavens and the Associated Press down here.
—Mark Twain
Topics: Media, Society

When I was younger, I could remember anything, whether it had happened or not.
—Mark Twain
Topics: Memory

A man never reaches that dizzy height of wisdom that he can no longer be lead by the nose.
—Mark Twain
Topics: Wisdom