Mark Twain Quotations | Page 6

Except a creature be part coward it is not a compliment to say it is brave; it is merely a loose application of the word. Consider the flea! -- incomparably the bravest of all the creatures of God, if ignorance of fear were courage.

The lack of money is the root of all evils.

Suppose you were an idiot and suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself

It's better to keep quiet and have people think you stupid, than to talk and confirm it.

It's better to stay silent and look a fool, rather than speak and remove all doubt.

The vast majority of the race, whether savage or civilized, are secretly kind-hearted and shrink from inflicting pain, but in the presence of the aggressive and pitiless minority they don't dare to assert themselves.

It takes an enemy and a friend, working together, to hurt you to the heart. The one to slander you, and the other to get the news to you.

It takes your enemy and your friend, working together to hurt you to the heart; the one to slander you and the other to get the news to you

It were not best that we should all think alike; it is difference of opinion that makes horse races

It will start in here in November and rain about four, and sometimes as much as seven days on a stretch; after that, you may loan out your umbrella for twelve months, with the serene confidence which a Christian feels in four aces

In Paris they simply stared when I spoke to them in French; I never did succeed in making those idiots understand their own language

If you think knowledge is dangerous, try ignorance

In the beginning of a change, the Patriot is a scarce man, Brave, Hated, and Scorned. When his cause succeeds however,the timid join him, For then it costs nothing to be a Patriot.

Civilization is a limitless multiplication of unnecessary necessities

His liberties were totally unrestricted, ... He was the only really independent person - boy or man - in the community, and by consequence he was tranquilly and continuously happy and envied by the rest of us.

I have traveled more than any one else, and I have noticed that even the angels speak English with an accent

I have told him all I know about it. And now he knows nothing about it himself.

But we are fearfully and wonderfully made, and we glorious Americans will occasionally astonish the God that created us when we get a fair start

By his father he is English, by his mother he is American - to my mind the blend which makes the perfect man

He said, 'I've never seen a festival where the whole nation gets behind an event. The Cup astonishes'. We are still thinking the same thing.

It takes me along time to lose my temper, but once lost I could not find it with a dog

I refused to attend his funeral. But I wrote a very nice letter explaining that I approved of it.

Any so-called material thing that you want is merely a symbol: you want it not for itself, but because it will content your spirit for the moment.

Any mummery will cure if the patient's faith is strong in it.

Anybody can write the first line of a poem, but is a very difficult task to make the second line rhyme with the first

A genuine expert can always foretell a thing that is 500 years away easier than he can a thing that's only 500 seconds off

A great soul, with a great purpose, can make a weak body strong and keep it so

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

The funerals of these, ... do not occur often enough.

The Germans are exceedingly fond of Rhine wines. One tells them from the vinegar by the label.

The Ganges front is the supreme showplace of Benares. Its tall bluffs are solidly caked from water to summit, along a stretch of three miles, with a splendid jumble of massive and picturesque masonry, a bewildering and beautiful confusion of stone platforms, temples, stair flights, rich and stately palaces....soaring stairways, sculptured temples, majestic palaces, softening away into the distances; and there is movement, motion, human life everywhere, and brilliantly costumed - streaming in rainbows up and down the lofty stairways, and massed in metaphorical gardens on the mile of great platforms at the river's edge.

The elastic heart of youth cannot be compressed into one constrained shape long at a time.

The house was as empty as a beer closet in a premises where painters have been at work.

The innocent who could laugh with joy didn't dare to because they were sitting beside a guilty friend who didn't dare to

The kernel, the soul - let us go further and say the substance, the bulk, the actual and valuable material of all human utterances - is plagiarism

The human race has only one really effective weapon and that is laughter.

The man who is a pessimist before forty-eight knows too much; if he is an optimist after it he knows too little

The man with a new idea is a crank until the idea succeeds

The man that sets out to carry a cat by it's tail learns something that will always be useful and which will never grow dim or doubtful.

The first half of life consists of the capacity to enjoy without the chance; the last half consists of the chance without the capacity.

The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco

You can't reason with the heart; it has its own laws, and thumps about things which the intellect scorns.

The trouble with the world is not that people know too little, but that they know so many things that ain't so.

The trouble with you Chicago people is that you think you are the best people down here, whereas you are merely the most numerous.

The true charm of pedestrianism does not lie in the walking, or the scenery, but in the talking.

Forget and forgive. This is not difficult when properly understood. It means forget inconvenient duties, then forgive yourself for forgetting. By rigid practice and stern determination, it comes easy.

Accident is the name of the greatest of all inventors.

A classic is a book which people praise and don't read.

A coin, sleeve button, or a collar button dropped in a bedroom will hide itself and be hard to find. A handkerchief in bed 'can't' be found.

Every one is a moon, and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody

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

Each person is born to one possession which out values all his others - his last breath

Each of you, for himself, by himself and on his own responsibility, must speak. And it is a solemn and weighty responsibility, and not lightly to be flung aside at the bullying of pulpit, press, government, or the empty catchphrases of politicians. Each must for himself alone decide what is right and what is wrong, and which course is patriotic and which isn't. You cannot shirk this and be a man. To decide against your convictions is to be an unqualified and inexcusable traitor, both to yourself and to your country, let man label you as they may. If you alone of all the nation shall decide one way, and that way be the right way according to your convictions of the right, you have done your duty by yourself and by your country- hold up your head! You have nothing to be ashamed of.

Education does not mean teaching people to know what they do not know; it means teaching them to behave as they do not behave.

Education is the path from cocky ignorance to miserable uncertainty.

Its easier to stay out than get out

There ought to be a room in every house to swear in

There is nothing you can say in answer to a compliment. I have been complimented myself a great many times, and they always embarrass me --I always feel that they have not said enough.

There is no use in walking five miles to fish when you can depend on being just as unsuccessful near home.

There isn't a single human characteristic that can be safely labeled as ''American.''

Thrusting my nose firmly between his teeth, I threw him heavily to the ground on top of me

Thunder is good, thunder is impressive; but it is lightning that does all the work

Thunder is impressive, but it is lightning that does the work.

When a man is known to have no settled convictions of his own he can't convict other people

When a man's dog turns against him it is time for a wife to pack her trunk and go home to mama

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?

It is the creator of wrong; wrong cannot exist until Moral Sense brings it into being

It is the difference of opinion that makes horse races.

It was a soft, reposeful summer landscape, as lovely as a dream, and as lonesome as Sunday.

It's a good idea to obey all the rules when you're young just so you'll have the strength to break them when you're old

It's a great place to live, but I wouldn't want to visit there

A big leather-bound volume makes an ideal razor strap. A thin book is useful to stick under a table with a broken caster to steady it. A large, flat atlas can be used to cover a window with a broken pane. And a thick, old-fashioned heavy book with a clasp is the finest thing in the world to throw at a noisy cat.

It's easy to quit smoking. I've done it hundreds of times.

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

There it is: it doesn't make any difference who we are or what we are, there's always somebody to look down on! somebody to hold in light esteem, somebody to be indifferent about.

I am prepared to meet anyone, but whether anyone is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter.

I am a border ruffian from the State of Missouri,I am a Connecticut Yankee by adoption.In me you have Missouri morals,Connecticut culture;this gentlemaen,is the combination which makes the perfect man

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

How often we recall, with regret, that Napoleon once shot at a magazine editor and missed him and killed a publisher. But we remember with charity that his intentions were good.

If I cannot smoke cigars in Heaven, I shall not go

If I cannot swear in heaven I shall not stay there.

If everybody was satisfied with himself there would be no heroes.

I do not like work even when someone else does it.

Great books are weighed and measured by their style and matter and not by the trimmings and shadings of their grammer

Happiness is a Swedish sunset; it is there for all, but most of us look the other way and lose it

If He Tom Sawyer had been a great and wise philosopher, like the writer of this book, he would now have comprehended that Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do and Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.

A man's first duty is to his own conscience and honor; the party and country come second to that, and never first.

Conscience, man's moral medicine chest.

In all the ages, three-fourths of the support of the great charities has been conscience money.

That cat will write her autograph all over your leg if you let her.

The happy phrasing of a compliment is one of the rarest of human gifts, and the happy delivery of it another.

Never put off until tomorrow what you can avoid altogether. A clean desk is a sign of a cluttered desk drawer. All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence, and then success is sure.

Never run after you own hat - others will be delighted to do it; why spoil their fun?

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 is, whereas an I tried to help I should but damage their cause the more and yet mayhap not live myself to see the desolation wrought.

When some men discharge an obligation, you can hear the report for miles around.

They all laid their heads together like as many lawyers when they are gettin' ready to prove that a man's heirs ain't got any right to his property.

Training- training is everything; training is all there is to a person. We speak of nature; it is folly; there is no such thing as nature; what we call by that misleading name is merely heredity and training. We have no thoughts of our own, no opinions of our own; they are transmitted to us, trained into us.

Genius has no youth, but starts with the ripeness of age and old experience.

Annihilation has no terrors for me, because I have already tried it before I was born --a hundred million years --and I have suffered more in an hour, in this life, than I remember to have suffered in the whole hundred million years put together.

The writing begins when you’ve finished. Only then do you know what you’re trying to say.