Great Quotes by Mark Twain

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For two hours I sat there, thinking of bygone times; recalling old scenes, and summoning half-forgotten faces out of the mists of the past; listening, in fancy, to voices that long ago grew silent for all time, and to once familiar songs that nobody sings now.

'Classic' - a book which people praise and don't read.

We despise all reverences and all the objects of reverence which are outside the pale of our own list of sacred things. And yet, with strange inconsistency, we are shocked when other people despise and defile the things which are holy to us.

Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please.

All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence, and then success is sure.

You can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.

India has two million gods, and worships them all. In religion all other countries are paupers; India is the only millionaire.

Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.

Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear.

Never put off till tomorrow what may be done day after tomorrow just as well.

Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason.

I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.

The man who does not read has no advantage over the man who cannot read.

Don't part with your illusions. When they are gone you may still exist, but you have ceased to live.

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.

Sanity and happiness are an impossible combination.

What would men be without women? Scarce, sir...mighty scarce.

Books are for people who wish they were somewhere else.

The easy confidence with which I know another man's religion is folly teaches me to suspect that my own is also. I would not interfere with any one's religion, either to strengthen it or to weaken it. I am not able to believe one's religion can affect his hereafter one way or the other, no matter what that religion may be. But it may easily be a great comfort to him in this life--hence it is a valuable possession to him.

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.

Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't.

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

The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter. ’tis the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.

But who prays for Satan? Who, in eighteen centuries, has had the common humanity to pray for the one sinner that needed it most?

Never allow someone to be your priority while allowing yourself to be their option.

God created war so that Americans would learn geography.

I am quite sure now that often, very often, in matters concerning religion and politics a man's reasoning powers are not above the monkey's.

I did not attend his funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it.

Don’t go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.

There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.

I've seen a heap of trouble in my life, and most of it never came to pass.

All men have heard of the Mormon Bible, but few except the "elect" have seen it, or, at least, taken the trouble to read it. I brought away a copy from Salt Lake. The book is a curiosity to me, it is such a pretentious affair, and yet so "slow," so sleepy; such an insipid mess of inspiration. It is chloroform in print. If Joseph Smith composed this book, the act was a miracle — keeping awake while he did it was, at any rate.

Twain on the Book of Mormon: The book seems to be merely a prosy detail of imaginary history, with the Old Testament for a model; followed by a tedious plagiarism of the New Testament. The author labored to give his words and phrases the quaint, old-fashioned sound and structure of our King James's translation of the Scriptures; and the result is a mongrel--half modern glibness, and half ancient simplicity and gravity. The latter is awkward and constrained; the former natural, but grotesque by the contrast. Whenever he found his speech growing too modern--which was about every sentence or two--he ladled in a few such Scriptural phrases as "exceeding sore," "and it came to pass," etc., and made things satisfactory again. "And it came to pass" was his pet. If he had left that out, his Bible would have been only a pamphlet.

It ain't those parts of the Bible that I can't understand that bother me, it is the parts that I do understand.

Let us live so that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.

Both marriage and death ought to be welcome: the one promises happiness, doubtless the other assures it.

The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.

The Impartial Friend: Death, the only immortal who treats us all alike, whose pity and whose peace and whose refuge are for all--the soiled and the pure, the rich and the poor, the loved and the unloved.

I thoroughly disapprove of duels. If a man should challenge me, I would take him kindly and forgivingly by the hand and lead him to a quiet place and kill him.

It is a time when one's spirit is subdued and sad, one knows not why; when the past seems a storm-swept desolation, life a vanity and a burden, and the future but a way to death.

Suppose you were an idiot, and suppose you were a member of Congress; but I repeat myself.

The more I learn about people, the more I like my dog.

A clear conscience is the sure sign of a bad memory.

Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on or by imbeciles who really mean it.

DEAR HOWELLS,—I have to write a line, lazy as I am, to say how your Poe article delighted me; and to say that I am in agreement with substantially all you say about his literature. To me his prose is unreadable—like Jane Austin’s. No, there is a difference. I could read his prose on salary, but not Jane’s. Jane is entirely impossible. It seems a great pity that they allowed her to die a natural death.

Everytime I read 'Pride and Prejudice' I want to dig her [Jane Austen] up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone.