Recommended Reading
- ‘Mark Twain: A Life‘ by Ron Powers
- ‘Mark Twain: The Complete Novels‘ by Mark Twain
- ‘On the Decay of the Art of Lying‘ by Mark Twain
- ‘The Wit and Wisdom of Mark Twain: A Book of Quotations‘ by Mark Twain
- ‘Adventures of Huckleberry Finn‘ by Mark Twain
Inspirational Quotes by Mark Twain (American Humorist)
Any emotion, if it is sincere, is involuntary.
—Mark Twain
Topics: Emotions
New Year’s Day: now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions. Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual . . . New Year’s is a harmless annual institution, of no particular use to anybody save as a scapegoat for promiscuous drunks, and friendly calls, and humbug resolutions.
—Mark Twain
Never tell the truth to people who are not worthy of it.
—Mark Twain
Topics: Truth
We are discreet sheep; we wait to see how the drove is going, and then go with the drove.
—Mark Twain
Topics: Conformity
The trade of critic, in literature, music, and the drama, is the most degraded of all trades
—Mark Twain
Often the surest way to convey misinformation is to tell the strict truth.
—Mark Twain
Topics: Truth, Honesty
We [Americans] are the lavishest and showiest and most luxury-loving people on the earth; and at our masthead we fly one true and honest symbol, the gaudiest flag the world has ever seen.
—Mark Twain
Topics: Americans
Education consists mainly in what we have unlearned.
—Mark Twain
Topics: Education
There are no standards of taste in wine, cigars, poetry, prose, etc. Each man’s own taste is the standard, and a majority vote cannot decide for him or in any slightest degree affect the supremacy of his own standard
—Mark Twain
Topics: Wine
Therein lies the defect of revenge: it’s all in the anticipation; the thing itself is a pain, not a pleasure; at least the pain is the biggest end of it.
—Mark Twain
Topics: Revenge, Anticipation
As to the adjective, when in doubt strike it out.
—Mark Twain
Topics: Authors & Writing, Writing, Doubt, Writers
I was exceedingly delighted with the waltz, and also with the polka. These differ in name, but there the difference ceases
—Mark Twain
Topics: Dance, Dancing
In the first place God made idiots. This was for practice. Then he made school boards.
—Mark Twain
Topics: Funny quotes
Education consists mainly of what we have unlearned.
—Mark Twain
Topics: Learning
Forget and forgive. This is not difficult when properly understood. It means forget inconvenient duties, then forgive yourself for forgetting. By rigid practice and stern determination, it comes easy.
—Mark Twain
Topics: Forgiveness
Never argue with a fool, onlookers may not be able to tell the difference.
—Mark Twain
Children have but little charity for one another’s defects
—Mark Twain
Topics: Children, One liners
Consider well the proportions of things. It is better to be a young June bug than an old bird of paradise.
—Mark Twain
Topics: Youth
Books are for people who wish they were somewhere else.
—Mark Twain
Topics: Book
Life is like riding a bicycle. You don’t fall off unless you stop pedaling.
—Mark Twain
Topics: Anger
Worrying about something is like paying interest on a debt you don’t even know if you owe.
—Mark Twain
I have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened.
—Mark Twain
Topics: Trouble, Worry
A monarch, when good, is entitled to the consideration which we accord to a pirate who keeps Sunday School between crimes; when bad, he is entitled to none at all.
—Mark Twain
Topics: Royalty, Kings, Queens
Use the right word and not its second cousin
—Mark Twain
Topics: Words
What is the most rigorous law of our being? Growth. No smallest atom of our moral, mental, or physical structure can stand still a year. It grows—it must grow; nothing can prevent it.
—Mark Twain
Topics: Growth
A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way.
—Mark Twain
Topics: Knowledge, Experience
Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.
—Mark Twain
Topics: Encouragement, General, Ambition, Role models, Feelings, Greatness, Doing Your Best, Become, Great, Feel, Discouragement, Mentoring, People, Try
One learns people through the heart, not the eyes or the intellect.
—Mark Twain
Topics: Understanding
There’s always something about your success that displeases even your best friends.
—Mark Twain
Topics: Success, Success & Failure
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
Barring that natural expression of villainy which we all have, the man looked honest enough.
—Mark Twain
Topics: Appearance
The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco.
—Mark Twain
Topics: Weather
There is no God, no universe, no human race, no earthly life, no heaven, no hell. It is all a dream, a grotesque and foolish dream. Nothing exists but you. And you are but a thought—a vagrant thought, a useless thought, a homeless thought, wandering forlorn among the empty eternities!
—Mark Twain
Topics: Loneliness
Fleas can be taught nearly anything that a Congressman can.
—Mark Twain
Topics: Politics
The time to begin writing an article is when you have finished it to your satisfaction. By that time you begin to clearly and logically perceive what it is you really want to say.
—Mark Twain
Topics: Writing
Of the delights of this world, man cares most for sexual intercourse. He will go to any length for it-risk fortune, character, reputation, life itself.
—Mark Twain
Topics: Sex
Just the omission of Jane Austen’s books alone would make a fairly good library out of a library that hadn’t a book in it.
—Mark Twain
Topics: Insults
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
Last spring I stopped frolicking with the mince pie after midnight. Up to then I had always believed it wasn’t loaded.
—Mark Twain
Topics: Aging
Whenever the literary German dives into a sentence, that in the last you are going to see of him until he emerges on the other side of his Atlantic with his verb in his mouth.
—Mark Twain
Topics: Writing
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
Josh Billings (Henry Wheeler Shaw) American Humorist
Bill Bryson American Humorist
Garrison Keillor American Broadcaster, Writer
Leo Rosten Russian-born American Humorist
Andy Rooney American Writer
Thomas Masson American Journalist
S. J. Perelman American Humorist
Robert Quillen American Journalist
Sam Levenson American Humorist
Charles Farrar Browne (Artemus Ward) American Humorist