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

A half-truth is the most cowardly of lies.

Mark Twain

Sing like no one is listening, love like you've never been hurt, dance like nobody is watching, and live like it's heaven on earth.

Mark Twain

High and fine literature is wine, and mine is only water; but everybody likes water.

Mark Twain

It is true, that which I have revealed to you; 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...

Mark Twain

Grief can take care of itself, but to get the full value of joy you must have somebody to divide it with.

Mark Twain

Laws control the lesser man. Right conduct controls the greater.

Mark Twain

I went to Maui to stay a week and remained five. I never spent so pleasant a month before, or bade any place goodbye so regretfully. I have not once thought of business, or care or human toil or trouble or sorrow or weariness, and the memory of it wi...

Mark Twain

Dates are hard to remember because they consist of figures; figures are monotonously unstriking in appearance, and they don't take hold, they form no pictures, and so they give the eye no chance to help. Pictures are the thing. Pictures can make date...

Mark Twain

It is discouraging to try to penetrate a mind like yours. You ought to get it out and dance on it. That would take some of the rigidity out of it.

Mark Twain

Customs do not concern themselves with right or wrong or reason. But they have to be obeyed; one reasons all around them until he is tired, but he must not transgress them, it is sternly forbidden.

Mark Twain

Always do what is right. It will gratify half of mankind and astound the other.

Mark Twain

A gentleman is someone who knows how to play the banjo and doesn't.

Mark Twain

Wagner’s music is better than it sounds.

Mark Twain

The poorest paid architect, engineer, general, author, sculptor, painter, lecturer, advocate, legislator, actor, preacher, singer is constructively in heaven when he is at work; and as for the musician with the fiddle-bow in his hand who sits in the ...

Mark Twain

Nature has no originality--I mean, no large ability in the matter of inventing new things, new ideas, new stage effects. She has a superb and amazing and infinitely varied equipment of old ones, but she never adds to them. She repeats--repeats--repea...

Mark Twain

If we hadn’t our bewitching autumn foliage, we should still have to credit the weather with one feature which compensates for all its bullying vagaries-the ice storm: when a leafless tree is clothed with ice from the bottom to the top – ice that ...

Mark Twain

In Boston they ask, how much does he know? In New York, how much is he worth? In Philadelphia, who were his parents?

Mark Twain

Our opinions do not really blossom into fruition until we have expressed them to someone else.

Mark Twain

Good judgement is the result of experience and experience the result of bad judgement.

Mark Twain

Loyalty to country ALWAYS. Loyalty to government, when it deserves it.

Mark Twain

There are two kinds of patriotism -- monarchical patriotism and republican patriotism. In the one case the government and the king may rightfully furnish you their notions of patriotism; in the other, neither the government nor the entire nation is p...

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