Quotes by Mark Twain

About Mark Twain:

Samuel Langhorne Clemens was an American author and humorist. He wrote The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and its sequel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885), the latter often called "The Great American Novel".
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

I persuaded him to throw the dirk away; and it was as easy as persuading a child to give up some bright fresh new way of killing itself.

Mark Twain

But it is a blessed provision of nature that at times like these, as soon as a man's mercury has got down to a certain point there comes a revulsion, and he rallies. Hope springs up, and cheerfulness along with it, and then he is in good shape to do ...

Mark Twain

How empty is theory in the presence of fact!

Mark Twain

disguise repetitiousness of fact under variety of form: skin your fact each time and lay on a new cuticle of words. It deceives the eye; you think it is a new fact; it gives you the idea that the court is carrying on like everything; this excites you...

Mark Twain

Wherefore, I beseech you let the dog and the onions and these people of the strange and godless names work out their several salvations from their piteous and wonderful difficulties without help of mine, for indeed their trouble is sufficient as it i...

Mark Twain

He begged hard, and said he couldn't play—a plausible excuse, but too thin; there wasn't a musician in the country that could.

Mark Twain

My kind of loyalty was loyalty to one's country, not to its institutions or its officeholders. The country is the real thing, the substantial thing, the eternal thing; it is the thing to watch over, and care for, and be loyal to; institutions are ext...

Mark Twain

Intellectual 'work' is misnamed; it is a pleasure, a dissipation, and is its own highest reward. The poorest paid architect, engineer, general, author, sculptor, painter, lecturer, advocate, legislator, actor, preacher, singer, is constructively in h...

Mark Twain

Often it does seem such a pity that Noah and his party did not miss the boat.

Mark Twain

He done his level best. Was he a mining on the flat.. He done it with a zest.. Was he a leading of the choir.. He done his level best. If he'd a reg'lar task to do, He never took no rest.. Or if 'twas off and on the same.. He done his level best. If ...

Mark Twain

I wish I could make him understand that a loving good heart is riches enough, and that without it intellect is poverty.

Mark Twain

After all these years, I see that I was mistaken about Eve in the beginning; it is better to live outside the Garden with her than inside it without her.

Mark Twain

You can't trust quotes on this site. They don't require sources, and many things are misattributed.

Mark Twain

Man is the only Patriot. He sets himself apart in his own country, under his own flag, and sneers at the other nations, and keeps multitudinous uniformed assassins on hand at heavy expense to grab slices of other people's countries, and keep them fro...

Mark Twain

Today the same thing over. I've got it up the tree again.

Mark Twain

I had to have company -- I was made for it, I think -- so I made friends with the animals. They are just charming, and they have the kindest disposition and the politest ways; they never look sour, they never let you feel that you are intruding, they...

Mark Twain

Australian History: .... does not read like history, but like the most beautiful lies.

Mark Twain

T[he rules of writing] require that the episodes in a tale shall be necessary parts of the tale, and shall help to develop it.

Mark Twain

T[he rules of writing] require that the personages in a tale shall be alive, except in the case of corpses, and that always the reader shall be able to tell the corpses from the others.

Mark Twain

There are many humorous things in the world; among them, the white man's notion that he is less savage than the other savages.

Mark Twain

In the first place God made idiots. This was for practice. Then he made school boards.

Mark Twain

Author Bio

  • NameMark Twain
  • DescriptionAmerican author and humorist
  • AliasesSamuel Langhorne Clemens; Samuel Clemens
  • BornNovember 30, 1835
  • DiedApril 21, 1910
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionJournalist; Humorist; Novelist; Children's Writer; Autobiographer
  • WorksAdventures Of Huckleberry Finn; The Adventures Of Tom Sawyer