Mark Twain
Full Name: Pseudonym of Samuel Langhorne Clemens
Birthdate: November 30, 1835
Birthplace: Florida, Missouri, U.S.A.
Date of Death: April 21, 1910
Occupation: Author and Humorist
Profile: Best known for the
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
Website: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Twain
Number of Quotes: 65
A banker is a fellow who lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining and wants it back the minute it begins to rain.
A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.
Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don't mind, it doesn't matter.
Ah well, I am a great and sublime fool. But then I am God's fool, and all His work must be contemplated with respect.
All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence; then success is sure.
Always do right. This will gratify some people, and astonish the rest.
An uneasy conscience is a hair in the mouth.
And I shall dream both before and after I go to sleep, of the little flower that has sprung up in the desert beside me and shed its
fragrance over my life and made its ways attractive with its beauty and turned its weariness to contentment with its sweet spirit. And I shall
bless you, my darling, out of a fullness of a heart that knows your worth beyond the ken of any ... better than all others I can love you, and
do love you, and shall always love you, always. Good night, darling - and peaceful slumbers refresh you and ministering angels attend you.
Better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than to open it and remove all doubt.
Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence in society.
Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear - not absence of fear.
Don't go to sleep, so many people die there.
Every one is a moon, and has a dark side which he never shows anybody.
Familiarity breeds contempt - and children.
Giving up smoking is the easiest thing in the world. I know because I've done it thousands of times.
Golf is a good walk spoiled.
Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.
He had had much experience of physicians, and said
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 druther not.
I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened.
I am pushing sixty. That is enough exercise for me.
I became a newspaperman. I hated to do it, but I couldn't find honest employment.
I do love you...as the dew loves the flowers;
as the birds love the sunshine;
as the wavelets love the breeze...
as the angels love the pure in heart.
I don't mind what the opposition say of me, so long as they don't tell the truth about me; but
when they descend to telling the truth about me, I consider that is taking an unfair advantage.
I have been complimented myself a great many times, and they always embarrass me - I always feel that they have not said enough.
I have never taken any exercise, except for sleeping and resting, and I never intend to take any. Exercise is loathsome.
I never let my schooling interfere with my education.
I refused to attend his funeral. But I wrote a very nice letter explaining that I approved of it.
I take my only exercise acting as pallbearer at the funerals of my friends who exercise regularly.
I was born modest, but it didn't last.
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 a man.
If you tell the truth you don't have to remember anything.
In the matter of diet - I have been persistently strict in sticking to the
things that didn't agree with me until one or the other of us got the best of it.
It has always been my rule never to smoke when asleep and never to refrain when awake.
It is a free press ... There are laws to protect the freedom of the press's
speech, but none that are worth anything to protect the people from the press.
It is better to deserve honors and not have them than to have them and not deserve them.
It is easy to find fault, if one has that disposition. There was once a man who, not being able to
find any other fault with his coal, complained that there were too many prehistoric toads in it.
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.
It usually takes me more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech.
July 4. Statistics show that we lose more fools on this day than in all the other days of the year put together.
This proves, by the number left in stock, that one Fourth of July per year is now inadequate, the country has grown so.
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.
Leavin' me as happy as a dog with two tails.
Let us endeavor so to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.
[Mankind] in its poverty, has unquestionably one really effective weapon - laughter. Power, money, persuasion,
supplication, persecution - these can lift at a colossal humbug - push it a little, weaken it a little, century by
century; but only laughter can blow it to rags and atoms at a blast. Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand.
More than one cigar at a time is excessive smoking.
Never let formal education get in the way of your learning.
Noise proves nothing. Often a hen who has merely laid an egg cackles as if she had laid an asteroid.
One of the most striking differences between a cat and a lie is that the cat has only nine lives.
Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.
Simple rules for saving money: To save half, when you are fired by an eager impulse to contribute to
charity, wait, and count to forty. To save three-quarters, count sixty. To save it all, count sixty-five.
That is just the way of the world; an enemy can partly ruin a man, but it takes
a good-natured injudicious friend to complete the thing and make it perfect.
The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a
large matter - it's the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.
The lack of money is the root of all evil.
The proper office of a friend is to side with you when you are in the wrong. Nearly everyone will side with you when you are in the right.
The secret source of humour itself is not joy, but sorrow. There is no humour in heaven.
The timid man yearns for full value and asks a tenth. The bold man strikes for double value and compromises on par.
There are three infallible ways of pleasing an author, and the three form a rising scale of compliment: 1, to tell him you
have read one of his books; 2, to tell him you have read all his books; 3, to ask him to let you read the manuscript of his
forthcoming book. No. 1 admits you to his respect; No. 2 admits you to his admiration; No. 3 carries you clear into his heart.
To cease smoking is the easiest thing I ever did; I ought to know because I've done it a thousand times.
Tom said to himself that it was not such a hollow world, after all. He had discovered a great law of human action,
without knowing it - namely, that in order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing
difficult to attain. If he had been a great and wise philosopher, like the writer of this book, he would now have comprehended
that Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do, and that Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.
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.
When angry, count to four; when very angry, swear.
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.
Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.
Whiskey is for drinking; water is for fighting over.
Wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been.
You try to tell me anything about the newspaper business! Sir! I have been through it from Alpha to Omega,
and I tell you the less a man knows the bigger the noise he makes and the higher the salary he commands.
Last on Earth
