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Mark Twain Quotes

Total quotes: 72
“Good books, good friends and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.”
— Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi
Tagged: good life, Reading, Books, Friendship, Friends, Relaxation, relax, Peace, calm, Quiet, Lifestyle, ideal life, the dream, American Dream
“The air up there in the clouds is very pure and fine, bracing and delicious. And why shouldn't it be?--it is the same the angels breathe.”
— Mark Twain, Roughing It
Tagged: Angels, Purity, Fine, Thoughts, Heaven, Nature, Peace, peacefulness, Life
“You can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.”
— Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
Tagged: depend, Imagination, Vision, Future, Mind, thoughtfulness, Perception, connectedness, Experience, Trust, Self-awareness, Think, mental power
“He was sunshine most always-I mean he made it seem like good weather.”
— Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Amazon Classics Edition)
Tagged: Goodness, Sunshine, Relationships, Love, personable, Charisma, Personality
“When I am king they shall not have bread and shelter only, but also teachings out of books, for a full belly is little worth where the mind is starved.”
— Mark Twain, The Prince and the Pauper
Tagged: king, Wealth, Learning, Teaching, Teachers, Knowledge, hungry for knowledge, starved, play on words, Values, Meaning, Life
“Adam was but human—this explains it all. He did not want the apple for the apple's sake, he wanted it only because it was forbidden. The mistake was in not forbidding the serpent; then he would have eaten the serpent.”
— Mark Twain, Pudd'nhead Wilson
Tagged: adam, eve, adam & eve, the forbidden apple, Forbidden, Human Nature, humanity, Mistakes, mistake, serpent, Desire, Longing, consumption, want what you can't have
“Man is the Reasoning Animal. Such is the claim. I think it is open to dispute.”
— Mark Twain, Letters from the Earth
Tagged: Reason, Man, humanity, Animals, animal, savage, stupidity, idiocy, idiots, America, Society, Human Nature, foolish, civilization, issues, problematic
“My experience of men had long ago taught me that one of the surest ways of begetting an enemy was to do some stranger an act of kindness which should lay upon him the irritating sense of an obligation.”
— Mark Twain, The Autobiography of Mark Twain
Tagged: angel, Good, Life, Living, beauty, kindness, pass it on, golden rule, Obligation, Strangers, humanity, humankind, morals, Ethics, Goodness, Experiences, lifehistory, Enemy, keep your enemies close
“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 Twain, The Psychology of Gratitude
Tagged: Dogs, humans, Compassion
“The proper office of a friend is to side with you when you are wrong. Nearly anybody will side with you when you are right.”
— Mark Twain, Mark Twain Quotes
Tagged: Friends, Friendship, Being Right
“You don’t know about me, without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, but that ain’t no matter. That book was made by a Mr Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly.”
— Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Amazon Classics Edition)
Tagged: first lines of books
“Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things can not be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.”
— Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad
Tagged: Wisdom, wholesome, Views, Men, humanity, Value, Experiences, travel, Learning, Growing Up, different, exchange, abroad, Culture, expanding, expand the mind, Acceptance, improve yourself, Self-awareness, inclusiveness, international
“Words are only painted fire, a look is the fire itself. She gave that look, and carried it away to the treasury of heaven, where all things that are divine belong.”
— Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
Tagged: Words, Power of Words, look, Women, Power, Heaven, divinity, humanity, power of a look, actions, actions speak louder than words
“Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example.”
— Mark Twain, Pudd'nhead Wilson
Tagged: humor, Funny, Irony, good example, maturity, above it, Goodness, Ethics, morals, upright, Good Person, humanity
“Let us endeavor so to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.”
— Mark Twain, Pudd'nhead Wilson
Tagged: live, live life to the fullest, full life, Death, Energy, Self-awareness, Being, alive, Life, human, humanity
“Nothing exists; all is a dream. God—man—the world—the sun, the moon, the wilderness of stars—a dream, all a dream; they have no existence. Nothing exists save empty space—and you!”
— Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger
Tagged: self, Self-awareness, Being, creature, Body, Reality, Dream, Imagination, Dreams, Spiritual, physical, Existence, God
“Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't.”
— Mark Twain, Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World
Tagged: fiction, Truth, strange, stranger than fiction, Possibility, possibilities, Life, Reality, Realism, Logic, Science, fact
“I have made it a rule never to smoke more than one cigar at a time. I have no other restriction as regards smoking.”
— Mark Twain, The Autobiography of Mark Twain
Tagged: cigar, smoking, humor, Irony, Sarcasm, rule, Law, Life, Vices, Vice
“I know all about audiences, they believe everything you say, except when you are telling the truth.”
— Mark Twain, The Autobiography of Mark Twain
Tagged: Truth, audience, Crowd, humanity, dumb, Irony, idiocy, idiots, Fools, stupidity, normalcy, group mentality, follow, leaders
“Huck was always willing to take a hand in any enterprise that offered entertainment and required no capital, for he had a troublesome super-abundance of that sort of time which is not money.”
— Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
Tagged: Wisdom, Youth, Childhood, Capitalism, Value, Time, time over money, Worth, Experiences, Entertainment, Life, enterprise, entrepreneur, rags to riches, Wealth
“One must travel, to learn. Every day, now, old Scriptural phrases that never possessed any significance for me before, take to themselves a meaning.”
— Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad
Tagged: Wisdom, wholesome, Views, Men, humanity, Value, Experiences, travel, Learning, Growing Up, different, exchange, abroad, Culture, expanding, expand the mind, Acceptance, improve yourself, Self-awareness, inclusiveness, international, Meaning
“Now and then we had a hope that if we lived and were good, God would permit us to be pirates.”
— Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi
Tagged: God, Religion, pirates, Becoming, Childhood, Imagination, play, boys, Youth
“That's the difference between governments and individuals. Governments don't care, individuals do.”
— Mark Twain, A Tramp Abroad
Tagged: Government, Care, Compassion, sympathy, Understanding, connectivity, humanity, Systems, institutions, Inequality, Injustice
“His hair was short and parted accurately in the middle, and he had all the look of an American person who would be likely to begin his signature with an initial, and spell his middle name out.”
— Mark Twain, A Tramp Abroad
Tagged: American, humor, Funny, american man, Privilege, privileged, Wealth
“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, The Diaries of Adam and Eve
Tagged: mistake, Togetherness, Relationships, the garden, Religion, The Bible, Genesis, Life, People, company, good company, home is where the love is, Love
“I freighted a leaf with a mental message for the friends at home, and dropped it in the stream. But I put no stamp on it and it was held for postage somewhere.”
— Mark Twain, Roughing It
Tagged: Nature, experiences in nature, Friendship, Friends, messages, messages never recieved, messages for no one, travel, Lonely, Alone, Thoughts
“Right is right, and wrong is wrong, and a body ain’t got no business doing wrong when he ain’t ignorant and knows better.”
— Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Amazon Classics Edition)
Tagged: Right, Wrong, humanity, the right, Ignorance, Opinions, Isolation, Hatred, bigotry, discrimination, People
“The world is made wrong; kings should go to school to their own laws, at times, and so learn mercy.”
— Mark Twain, The Prince and the Pauper
Tagged: kings, the system, Mercy, Learning, Laws, schools, Education, Experience, Life Experience, Class, Wealth, wealth disparity, Life, Equality, Injustice, Inequality
“But as soon as one is at rest in this world off he goes on something else to worry about.”
— Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
Tagged: Mind, Thoughts, worry, Anxiety, Thinking, Rest, peacefulness, no rest, riddled with worry, Anxious, deep thinker, headcase
“There are those who scoff at the schoolboy, calling him frivolous and
shallow: Yet it was the schoolboy who said 'Faith is believing what you
know ain't so'.”
— Mark Twain, Pudd'nhead Wilson
Tagged: schoolboy, Faith, Reason, realist, Reality, Belief, Believe, Religion, critical mind, Thinking, Thoughts, Philosophy, philosophize, Childhood, bully, bullies
“The joy of killing! the joy of seeing killing done - these are traits of the human race at large.”
— Mark Twain, Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World
Tagged: Killing, Murder, Joy, creepy, Human Nature, savage, savagery, barbarians, humanity, Hatred, human race, Characteristics, Society
“Some people get an education without going to college. The rest get it after they get out.”
— Mark Twain, Timeless Advice and Words of Wisdom from America's Most Revered Humorist
Tagged: College, Education
“What's the use you learning to do right, when it's troublesome to do right and ain't no trouble to do wrong, and the wages is just the same?”
— Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Amazon Classics Edition)
Tagged: mark twain quotes, best mark twain quotes, Wrong, Right, morals, Ethics, Wisdom, Learning, Education, Growing Up
“When one writes a novel about grown people, he knows exactly where to stop - that is, with a marriage; but when he writes about juveniles, he must stop where he best can.”
— Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
Tagged: Wisdom, Youth, Childhood, Marriage, novel, Writing, Writers, Thoughts, Endings, Beginning, Beginnings
“She kept up her compliments, and I kept up my determination to deserve them or die.”
— Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad
Tagged: compliments, Love, Relationships, deserving, live up to your potential, Potential, deserved, Determination, Ambition, Standards, Expectations, Self-awareness, inspiration
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts.”
— Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad
Tagged: Human Nature, Natural, humanity, cross-culturally, sameness, difference, love is love, humans, international, The World, travel, narrow-mindedness, solution, travel and love, kill bigotry, we need travel, end hate
“His head was an hour-glass; it could stow an idea, but it had to do it a grain at a time, not the whole idea at once.”
— Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
Tagged: Mind, Thoughts, brain work, how your mind works, slow, Ideas, Time, way of thinking, Learning, Understanding
“There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.”
— Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi
Tagged: Science, fact, Truth, Reality, realist, Understanding, Learning, Investment, fascination, Teaching
“You are not you--you have no body, no blood, no bones, you are but a thought. I myself have no existence; I am but a dream--your dream, a creature of your imagination.”
— Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger
Tagged: self, Self-awareness, Being, creature, Body, Reality, Dream, Imagination, Dreams, Spiritual, physical
“Every man is a suffering-machine and a happiness- machine combined. The two functions work together harmoniously, with a fine and delicate precision, on the give-and-take principle.”
— Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger
Tagged: self, Self-awareness, Being, creature, Body, Reality, Dream, Imagination, Dreams, Spiritual, physical, Existence, God, Man, Suffering, Happiness, harmony, function, human machine, give and take
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