Mark Twain Quotes

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

When you fish for love, bait with your heart, not your brain.

~ Mark Twain

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

~ Mark Twain

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

~ Mark Twain

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

~ Mark Twain

The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.

~ Mark Twain

Obscurity and a competence—that is the life that is best worth living.

~ Mark Twain

Now and then we had a hope that if we lived and were good, God would permit us to be pirates.

~ Mark Twain

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.

~ Mark Twain

Kindness is a language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see.

~ Mark Twain

It's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog.

~ Mark Twain

The dog is a gentleman, I hope to go to his heaven not man's.

~ Mark Twain

I've had a lot of worries in my life, most of which never happened.

~ Mark Twain

I wish I could make him understand that a loving good heart is riches enough, and that without it intellect is poverty.

~ Mark Twain

There isn't time, so brief is life, for bickerings, apologies, heartburnings, callings to account. There is only time for loving, and but an instant, so to speak, for that.

~ Mark Twain

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

~ Mark Twain

Substitute 'damn' every time you're inclined to write 'very,' your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.

~ Mark Twain

Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.

~ Mark Twain

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

~ Mark Twain

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

~ Mark Twain

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

~ Mark Twain

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.

~ Mark Twain

The easy confidence with which I know another man's religion is folly teaches me to suspect that my own is also.

~ Mark Twain

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

~ Mark Twain

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.

~ Mark Twain

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

~ Mark Twain

I have found out that there ain't no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than to travel with them.

~ Mark Twain

I must have a prodigious amount of mind; it takes me as much as a week, sometimes, to make it up!

~ Mark Twain

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

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

~ Mark Twain

What is Man? Man is a noisome bacillus whom Our Heavenly Father created because he was disappointed in the monkey.

~ Mark Twain

A successful book is not made of what is in it, but what is left out of it.

~ Mark Twain

The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.

~ Mark Twain

Under certain circumstances, profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer.]

~ Mark Twain

When I was younger, I could remember anything, whether it had happened or not; but my faculties are decaying now and soon I shall be so I cannot remember any but the things that never happened. It is sad to go to pieces like this but we all have to do it.

~ Mark Twain

It is by the goodness of god that in our country we have those 3 unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them.

~ Mark Twain

When red-headed people are above a certain social grade their hair is auburn.

~ Mark Twain

I notice that you use plain, simple language, short words and brief sentences. That is the way to write English―it is the modern way and the best way. Stick to it; don't let fluff and flowers and verbosity creep in. When you catch an adjective, kill it. No, I don't mean utterly, but kill most of them―then the rest will be valuable. They weaken when they are close together. They give strength when they are wide apart. An adjective habit, or a wordy, diffuse, flowery habit, once fastened upon a person, is as hard to get rid of as any other vice.

~ Mark Twain

If Christ were here there is one thing he would not be—a Christian.

~ Mark Twain

Often it does seem such a pity that Noah and his party did not miss the boat.

~ Mark Twain