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Mark Twain

80 quotes

Selected quotes · 80
01
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 safe harbor, catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore, Dream, Discover.
Mark TwainFreedom
02
All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence, and then success is sure.
Mark TwainSelf-belief
03
There are people who can do all fine and heroic things but one - keep from telling their happiness to the unhappy.
Mark TwainCourage
04
It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare.
Mark TwainCourage
05
You can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.
Mark TwainMindset
06
It's good sportsmanship to not pick up lost golf balls while they are still rolling.
Mark TwainWisdom
07
Cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education.
Mark TwainNature
08
It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them.
Mark TwainAction
09
Always do what is right. It will gratify half of mankind and astound the other.
Mark TwainFreedom
10
Never allow someone to be your priority while allowing yourself to be their option.
Mark TwainSuccess
11
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 TwainAction
12
Keep away from those who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you believe that you too can become great.
Mark TwainGrowth
13
Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.
Mark TwainTime
14
Never put off till tomorrow what may be done day after tomorrow just as well.
Mark TwainTime
15
It's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog.
Mark TwainWisdom
16
When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained.
Mark TwainLife
17
When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.
Mark TwainWisdom
18
Principles have no real force except when one is well - fed.
Mark TwainWisdom
19
Never tell the truth to people who are not worthy of it.
Mark TwainJustice
20
Humor is mankind's greatest blessing.
Mark TwainWisdom
21
When you fish for love, bait with your heart, not your brain.
Mark TwainCreativity
22
In a good bookroom you feel in some mysterious way that you are absorbing the wisdom contained in all the books through your skin, without even opening them.
Mark TwainWisdom
23
Humor must not professedly teach and it must not professedly preach, but it must do both if it would live forever.
Mark TwainLife
24
The very ink with which history is written is merely fluid prejudice.
Mark TwainWisdom
25
A person with a new idea is a crank until the idea succeeds.
Mark TwainWisdom
26
Don't let schooling interfere with your education.
Mark TwainWisdom
27
I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.
Mark TwainWisdom
28
In the Spring, I have counted 136 different kinds of weather inside of 24 hours.
Mark TwainTime
29
Kindness is a language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see.
Mark TwainLove
30
Golf is a good walk spoiled.
Mark TwainWisdom
31
The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter. It is the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.
Mark TwainFriendship
32
Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear.
Mark TwainCourage
33
Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.
Mark TwainFriendship
34
When a person cannot deceive himself the chances are against his being able to deceive other people.
Mark TwainLife
35
We have the best government that money can buy.
Mark TwainWisdom
36
The best way to cheer yourself is to try to cheer someone else up.
Mark TwainAction
37
Life would be infinitely happier if we could only be born at the age of eighty and gradually approach eighteen.
Mark TwainFriendship
38
Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts.
Mark TwainAction
39
Truth is the most valuable thing we have. Let us economize it.
Mark TwainJustice
40
Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured.
Mark TwainWisdom
41
Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint.
Mark TwainWisdom
42
The trouble is not in dying for a friend, but in finding a friend worth dying for.
Mark TwainFriendship
43
Necessity is the mother of taking chances.
Mark TwainWisdom
44
Man was made at the end of the week's work, when God was tired.
Mark TwainFaith
45
Loyalty to the Nation all the time, loyalty to the Government when it deserves it.
Mark TwainFriendship
46
Suppose you were an idiot, and suppose you were a member of Congress; but I repeat myself.
Mark TwainWisdom
47
If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything.
Mark TwainJustice
48
I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it.
Mark TwainWisdom
49
The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.
Mark TwainLife
50
It is better to deserve honors and not have them than to have them and not deserve them.
Mark TwainWisdom
51
In the first place, God made idiots. That was for practice. Then he made school boards.
Mark TwainFaith
52
Sanity and happiness are an impossible combination.
Mark TwainHappiness
53
Education: the path from cocky ignorance to miserable uncertainty.
Mark TwainWisdom
54
The secret of getting ahead is getting started.
Mark TwainAction
55
The man who does not read has no advantage over the man who cannot read.
Mark TwainWisdom
56
'Classic' - a book which people praise and don't read.
Mark TwainWisdom
57
Wrinkles should merely indicate where the smiles have been.
Mark TwainHappiness
58
Education consists mainly of what we have unlearned.
Mark TwainWisdom
59
Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.
Mark TwainLife
60
If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and man.
Mark TwainFreedom
61
If you don't read the newspaper, you're uninformed. If you read the newspaper, you're mis-informed.
Mark TwainWisdom
62
Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don't mind, it doesn't matter.
Mark TwainMindset
63
Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.
Mark TwainWisdom
64
When in doubt tell the truth.
Mark TwainJustice
65
Books are for people who wish they were somewhere else.
Mark TwainWisdom
66
I've lived through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened.
Mark TwainFriendship
67
The only way to keep your health is to eat what you don't want, drink what you don't like, and do what you'd rather not.
Mark TwainWisdom
68
The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.
Mark TwainLife
69
It's not what we don't know that gets us in trouble, it's what we know for sure that just ain't so.
Mark TwainTime
70
Worrying is like paying a debt you don’t owe.
Mark TwainWisdom
71
Worrying is like paying a debt you don't owe.
Mark TwainWisdom
72
It's no wonder that truth is stranger than fiction. Fiction has to make sense.
Mark TwainJustice
73
God created war so that Americans would learn geography.
Mark TwainCreativity
74
The holy passion of Friendship is of so sweet and steady and loyal and enduring a nature that it will last through a whole lifetime, if not asked to lend money.
Mark TwainFreedom
75
The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.
Mark TwainCourage
76
Do the thing you fear most and the death of fear is certain.
Mark TwainCourage
77
Lord save us all from old age and broken health and a hope tree that has lost the faculty of putting out blossoms.
Mark TwainFailure
78
Never regret anything that made you smile.
Mark TwainHappiness
79
Everyone is a moon, and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody.
Mark TwainWisdom
80
I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.
Mark TwainCourage