Mark Twain Funny Quotations

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

Do the right thing. It will gratify some people and astonish the rest.

Never argue with stupid people, they will drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience.

Sacred cows make the best hamburger.

Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company.

Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don't mind, it doesn't matter.

There are basically two types of people. People who accomplish things, and people who claim to have accomplished things. The first group is less crowded.

The lack of money is the root of all evil.

Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.

If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything.

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

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

Nothing so needs reforming as other people's habits.

Never put off till tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow.

When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained.

Sometimes too much to drink is barely enough.

Why is it that we rejoice at a birth and grieve at a funeral? It is because we are not the person involved.

It was wonderful to find America, but it would have been more wonderful to miss it.

I must have a prodigious quantity of mind; it takes me as much as a week sometimes to make it up.

What is the difference between a taxidermist and a tax collector? The taxidermist takes only your skin.

Work is a necessary evil to be avoided.

A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way.

Honesty is the best policy - when there is money in it.

Giving up smoking is the easiest thing in the world. I know because I've done it thousands of times.

The trouble ain't that there is too many fools, but that the lightning ain't distributed right.

Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.

Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint.

Only one thing is impossible for God: To find any sense in any copyright law on the planet.

Noise proves nothing. Often a hen who has merely laid an egg cackles as if she laid an asteroid.

One of the most striking differences between a cat and a lie is that a cat has only nine lives.

Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example.

I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did. I said I didn't know.

'Classic.' A book which people praise and don't read.

I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it.

Only kings, presidents, editors, and people with tapeworms have the right to use the editorial 'we.'

It's good sportsmanship to not pick up lost golf balls while they are still rolling.

We have the best government that money can buy.

I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened.

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 rather not.

I don't like to commit myself about heaven and hell - you see, I have friends in both places.

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

There is a great deal of human nature in people.

Mardi Gras is a thing which could hardly exist in the practical North. For the soul of it is the romantic, not the funny and the grotesque. Take away the romantic mysteries, the kings and knights and big-sounding titles, and Mardi-Gras would die, down there in the South.

The past may not repeat itself, but it sure does rhyme

All Congresses and Parliaments have a kindly feeling for idiots, and a compassion for them, on account of personal experience and heredity.

Satan hasn't a single salaried helper; the Opposition employ a million

It usually takes more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech.

I could have made a neat retort but didn't, for I was flurried and didn't think of it till I was downstairs

A man with a hump-backed uncle mustn't make fun of another man's cross-eyed aunt

A tax is a fine for doing well, a fine is a tax for doing wrong.

How many of you believe in telekinesis? Raise my hand.

If there are no cigars in heaven, I shall not go.

The idea that no gentleman ever swears is all wrong. He can swear and still be a gentleman if he does it in a nice and benevolent and affectionate way.

If you don't read the newspaper, you're uninformed. If you read the newspaper, you're mis-informed.

Of all God's creatures, there is only one that cannot be made slave of the leash. That one is the cat. If man could be crossed with the cat it would improve the man, but it would deteriorate the cat.

The trouble is not in dying for a friend, but in finding a friend worth dying for.

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

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.

I am a great and sublime fool. But then I am God's fool, and all His works must be contemplated with respect.

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.

Everyone is a moon, and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody.

great people are those who make others feel that they, too, can become great.

What a man misses mostly in heaven is company.

Why do you sit there looking like an envelope without any address on it?

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

The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.

A banker is a fellow who lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining, but wants it back the minute it begins to rain.

The good Lord didn't create anything without a purpose, but the fly comes close.

A home without a cat — and a well-fed, well-petted and properly revered cat — may be a perfect home, perhaps, but how can it prove title?

Familiarity breeds contempt - and children.

We have a criminal jury system which is superior to any in the world and it's efficiency is only marred by the difficulty of finding twelve men every day who don't know anything and can't read-

Don't let schooling interfere with your education.

A cat is more intelligent than people believe, and can be taught any crime.

Eat a live frog first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day.

Let us be thankful for the fools. But for them the rest of us could not succeed.

By trying we can easily endure adversity. Another man's, I mean.

I have made it a rule never to smoke more that one cigar at a time.

Martyrdom covers a multitude of sins.

Hain't we got all the fools in town on our side? And hain't that a big enough majority in any town?

Ignorant people think it is the noise which fighting cats make that is so aggravating, but it ain't so; it is the sickening grammar that they use.

April 1. This is the day upon which we are reminded of what we are on the other three hundred and sixty-four..

Most writers regard the truth as their most valuable possession, and therefore are economical in its use.

There is nothing so annoying as having two people talking when you're busy interrupting.

Now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions. Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual.

I've lived through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened.

whenever the literary german dives into a sentence, this is the last you are going to see of him till he emerges on the other side of his atlantic with his verb in his mouth.

Concerning the difference between man and the jackass: some observers hold that there isn't any. But this wrongs the jackass.

Denial ain't just a river in Egypt.

Golf is a good walk spoiled.

In Paris they just simply opened their eyes and stared when we spoke to them in French! We never did succeed in making those idiots understand their own language.

Had double chins all the way down to his stomach.

We like a man to come right out and say what he thinks- if we agree with him.

I have been an author for 20 years and an ass for 55.

Nothing spoils a good story like the arrival of an eyewitness.

The way it is now, the asylums can hold the sane people, but if we tried to shut up the insane we should run out of building materials.

He has been a doctor a year now and has had two patients - no, three, I think - yes, it was three; I attended their funerals.

Behind every successful man, there is a woman - And behind every unsuccessful man, there are two.

I take my only exercise acting as a pallbearer at the funerals of my friends who exercise regularly.

Behold, the fool saith, "Put not all thine eggs in the one basket" - which is but a matter of saying, "Scatter your money and your attention"; but the wise man saith, "Pull all your eggs in the one basket and - WATCH THAT BASKET." - Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar

All generalizations are false, including this one.