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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)

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

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