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Mark Twain Quotes - Page 39

All Quotes 4th Of July Accomplishment Achievement Addiction Adventure Adversity Age Aging Alcohol Ambition Anxiety Appearance Appreciation Arguing Army Arrogance Art Atheism Atheist Attitude Authority Balance Beauty Beer Being Alone Belief Bible Bitterness Blame Bliss Bravery Business Censorship Challenges Change Character Charity Chastity Children Christianity Church Coffee College Comedy Communication Community Compassion Confidence Conflict Conscience Conservatism Constitution Cooking Country Courage Crime Criticism Dance Dancing Darkness Death Deception Defeat Democracy Design Desire Determination Devil Disappointment Diversity Divorce Doubt Drinking Duty Dying Earth Education Effort Encouragement Energy Enthusiasm Envy Epic Ethics Evidence Evil Exercise Experience Failing Failure Family Fashion Fear Feelings Fighting Finding Yourself Fitness Flattery Focus Food Forgiveness Free Speech Freedom Friends Friendship Fun Funeral Funny Future Genius Getting Older Giving Giving Up God Gold Good Times Gossip Grace Graduation Gratitude Greatness Greed Grief Grieving Growing Up Growth Happiness Happy Hard Times Hard Work Hate Healing Health Heart Heaven Hell Hilarious Hills Hinduism History Holiday Home Honesty Honor House Human Nature Humanity Humility Hunger Hunting Hurt Hypocrisy Ignorance Imagination Independence Individuality Innovation Insanity Inspiration Inspirational Inspiring Integrity Intelligence Journey Joy Judgement Judging Judgment Justice Kindness Knowledge Labor Language Laughter Law Of Attraction Leadership Learning Liars Liberty Life Life And Death Literature Loneliness Losing Loss Love Loyalty Luck Lying Madness Manners Marriage Math Memorial Day Memories Military Moderation Modesty Mom Monarchy Money Moon Morality Morning Motivation Motivational Mountain Music Nature New Year Office Opportunity Optimism Pain Parenting Passion Past Patriotism Peace Perception Perfection Perseverance Personality Philosophy Planning Pleasure Politics Positive Positive Thinking Positivity Poverty Power Praise Prayer Preaching Prejudice Pride Privacy Profanity Progress Prophecy Prosperity Purpose Quality Rain Reading Reading Books Reality Recovery Regret Religion Reputation Respect Responsibility Revolution Risk Running Sad Sadness Sailing Salvation Sanity Sarcasm Satan School Science Self Esteem Seven Shame Silence Simplicity Sin Skins Sleep Smoking Society Solitude Son Sorrow Soul Sports Spring Strength Struggle Study Stupidity Style Success Suffering Summer Sunday Sunshine Swimming Talent Taxes Teaching Temperance Temptation Time Today Trade Tradition Tragedy Training Travel Trust Truth Twins Undertaker Vacation Values Violence Virtue Vision Vocation Voting Waiting War Water Wealth Whiskey Wife Wine Winning Winter Wisdom Wit Work Worry Worship Writing Youth
There are people who strictly deprive themselves of each and every eatable, drinkable, and smokable which has in any way acquired a shady reputation. They pay this price for health. And health is all they get for it.

There are people who strictly deprive themselves of each and every eatable, drinkable, and smokable which has in any way acquired a shady reputation. They pay this price for health. And health is all they get for it. How strange it is. It is like paying out your whole fortune for a cow that has gone dry.

Mark Twain
Food, People, Gone
Mark Twain, General Press (2016). “The Complete Works of Mark Twain: All 13 Novels, Short Stories, Poetry and Essays”, p.3582, GENERAL PRESS

Death is the starlit strip between the companionship of yesterday and the reunion of tomorrow.

Mark Twain
Yesterday, Tomorrow, Companionship

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

Mark Twain
Happiness, Bullying, Laughter
Mark Twain (2015). “Bite-Size Twain: Wit and Wisdom from the Literary Legend”, p.35, St. Martin's Press

Work is a necessary evil to be avoided.

Mark Twain
Funny, Work, Evil
Mark Twain (2014). “Mark Twain on Common Sense: Timeless Advice and Words of Wisdom from America's Most-Revered Humorist”, p.45, Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.

What is it that strikes a spark of humor from a man? It is the effort to throw off, to fight back the burden of grief that is laid on each one of us. In youth we don't feel it, but as we grow to manhood we find the burden on our shoulders. Humor? It is nature's effort to harmonize conditions. The further the pendulum swings out over woe the further it is bound to swing back over mirth.

Mark Twain
Grief, Humor, Fighting
Mark Twain, Gary Scharnhorst (2009). “Mainly the truth: interviews with Mark Twain”, University Alabama Press

The highest perfection of politeness is only a beautiful edifice, built, from the base to the dome, of ungraceful and gilded forms of charitable and unselfish lying.

Mark Twain
Beautiful, Lying, Perfection
"The Stolen White Elephant: Etc". Book by Mark Twain, p. 220-221, 1882.

He had an uncommon fondness for cats. As an old man summering in New Hampshire, Twain even rented kittens from a nearby farm to keep him company until he returned home. "If man could be crossed with the cat," said Twain, "it would improve the man, but it would deteriorate the cat." There's always something about your success that displeases even your best friends.

Mark Twain
Inspirational Life, Cat, Home

Humor must not professedly teach and it must not professedly preach, but it must do both if it would live forever.

Mark Twain
Humor, Forever, Literature
Mark Twain, Milton Meltzer (2002). “Mark Twain Himself: A Pictorial Biography”, p.151, University of Missouri Press

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

Mark Twain
Funny, America, Missing
Pudd'nhead Wilson conclusion, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar" (1894)

It was a splendid population - for all the slow, sleepy, sluggish-brained sloths stayed at home - you never find that sort of people among pioneers - you cannot build pioneers out of that sort of material. It was that population that gave to California a name for getting up astounding enterprises and rushing them through with a magnificent dash and daring and a recklessness of cost or consequences, which she bears unto this day - and when she projects a new surprise the grave world smiles as usual and says, "Well, that is California all over.

Mark Twain
Home, Names, California
Mark Twain (2017). “Mark Twain, the Globetrotter: Complete Travel Books, Memoirs & Anecdotes (Illustrated Edition): A Tramp Abroad, The Innocents Abroad, Roughing It, Old Times on the Mississippi, Life on the Mississippi, Following the Equator & Some Rambling Notes of an Idle Excursion, With Author’s Biography”, p.999, e-artnow

If science exterminates a disease which has been working for God, it is God that gets the credit and all the pulpits break into grateful advertising-raptures and call attention to how good he is. Yes, he has done it. Perhaps he waited a thousand years before doing it. They forget to say that he is the slowest mover in the universe, that his Eye That Never Sleeps, might as well, since it takes a century to see what any other eye can see in a week.

Mark Twain
Grateful, Sleep, Eye

My kind of loyalty was loyalty to one's country, not to its institutions or its officeholders. The country is the real thing, the substantial thing, the eternal thing; it is the thing to watch over, and care for, and be loyal to; institutions are extraneous, they are its mere clothing, and clothing can wear out, become ragged, cease to be comfortable, cease to protect the body from winter, disease, and death.

Mark Twain
Loyalty, Country, Real
Mark Twain (1889). “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court”, p.100, Createspace Independent Pub

Heroine: Girl in a book who is saved from drowning by a hero and marries him next week, but if it was to be over again ten years later it is likely she would rather have a life-belt and he would rather have her have it. Hero: Person in a book who does things which he can't and girl marries him for it.

Mark Twain
Girl, Book, Hero
Mark Twain (1992). “Collected Tales, Sketches, Speeches & Essays: 1891-1910”

A Christian's first duty is to God. It then follows, as a matter of course, that it is his duty to carry his Christian code to the polls and vote them... If Christians should vote their duty to God at the polls, they would carry every election, and do it with ease... it would bring about a moral revolution that would be incalculably beneficent. It would save the country.

Mark Twain
Christian, Country, Would Be

A discriminating irreverence is the creator and protector of human liberty.

Mark Twain
Freedom, Liberty, Irreverence
Mark Twain (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Mark Twain (Illustrated)”, p.1479, Delphi Classics

All you need is ignorance and confidence and the success is sure.

Mark Twain
Success, Confidence, Congratulations

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.

Mark Twain
Funny, Nice, Ideas
Taxes and Morals, delivered 22 January 1906, New York

Politicians, old buildings, and prostitutes become respectable with age.

Mark Twain
Old Buildings, Age, Politician

We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it and stop there lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot stove lid. She will never sit down on a hot stove lid again and that is well but also she will never sit down on a cold one anymore.

Mark Twain
Inspirational, Wisdom, Philosophical
Following the Equator ch. 11, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar" (1897)

The face of the water, in time, became a wonderful book- a book that was a dead language to the uneducated passenger, but which told its mind to me without reserve, delivering its most cherished secrets as clearly as if it uttered them with a voice. And it was not a book to be read once and thrown aside, for it had a new story to tell every day.

Mark Twain
Book, Voice, Water
Mark Twain (2017). “The Complete Works of Mark Twain (Illustrated Edition): Novels, Short Stories, Memoir, Travel Books, Letters, Biography, Articles & Speeches: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer & Huckleberry Finn, Life on the Mississippi, Yankee in King Arthur's Court…”, p.6903, e-artnow

We all do no end of feeling, and we mistake it for thinking. And out of it we get an aggregation which we consider a boon. Its name is public opinion. It is held in reverence. Some think it the voice of God.

Mark Twain
Mistake, Thinking, Names
Mark Twain (1994). “Tales, Speeches, Essays, and Sketches”, p.272, Penguin

Man is a Religious Animal. He is the only Religious Animal. He is the only animal that has the True Religion - several of them.

Mark Twain
Religious, Atheist, Animal
"The Lowest Animal" (1940)

My first American ancestor, gentlemen, was an Indian-an early Indian. Your ancestors skinned him alive, and I am an orphan. All those Salem witches were ancestors of mine. Your people made it tropical for them. . . . The first slave brought into New England out of Africa was an ancestor of mine-for I am a mixed breed, an infinitely shaded and exquisite Mongrel.

Mark Twain
People, Gentleman, Alive

Simplified spelling is all right, but, like chastity, you can carry it too far.

Mark Twain
Spelling, Chastity
Mark Twain (2004). “The Portable Mark Twain”, p.18, Penguin

Nevertheless we have this curious spectacle: daily the trained parrot in the pulpit gravely delivers himself of these ironies, which he has acquired at second-hand and adopted without examination, to a trained congregation which accepts them without examination, and neither the speaker nor the hearer laughs at himself. It does seem as if we ought to be humble when we are at a bench-show, and not put on airs of intellectual superiority there.

Mark Twain
Humble, Air, Hands
Mark Twain, John S. Tuckey (1972). “Mark Twain's Fables of Man”, p.115, Univ of California Press

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