Twain Quotes

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.

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

Insanity is doing the same thing, over and over again, but expecting different results.

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

It is better to remain silent at the risk of being thought a fool, than to talk and remove all doubt of it.

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

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

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

Go to heaven for the climate and hell for the company.

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

I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.

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

A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.

Never tell the truth to people who are not worthy of it.

Be careful about reading health books. Some fine day you'll die of a misprint.

Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.

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.

In a good bookroom you feel in some mysterious way that you are absorbing the wisdom contained in all the books through your skin, without even opening them.

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.

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

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

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

God created war so that Americans would learn geography.

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

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

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

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.

Wrinkles should merely indicate where the smiles have been.

Books are for people who wish they were somewhere else.

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

Sanity and happiness are an impossible combination.

There are three types of lies -- lies, damn lies, and statistics.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

Always do what is right. It will gratify half of mankind and astound the other.

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

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

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

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

It is not the size of the dog in the fight that counts, but the fight in the dog that wins.

Education: the path from cocky ignorance to miserable uncertainty.

The best way to cheer yourself is to try to cheer someone else up.

Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.

Name the greatest of all inventors. Accident.

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

The worst loneliness is to not be comfortable with yourself.

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

The secret to getting ahead is getting started.

History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme.

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

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

If animals could speak, the dog would be a blundering outspoken fellow; but the cat would have the rare grace of never saying a word too much.

You believe in a book that has talking animals, wizards, witches, demons, sticks turning into snakes, burning bushes, food falling from the sky, people walking on water, and all sorts of magical, absurd and primitive stories, and you say that we are the ones that need help?

I didn't have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.

Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.

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.

Out of all the things I have lost, I miss my mind the most.

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

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

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

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.

To get the full value of joy you must have someone to divide it with.

When angry, count four. When very angry, swear.

Of all the animals, man is the only one that is cruel. He is the only one that inflicts pain for the pleasure of doing it.

Heaven goes by favor. If it went by merit, you would stay out and your dog would go in.

Any emotion, if it is sincere, is involuntary.

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

It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare.

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.

The most interesting information come from children, for they tell all they know and then stop.

Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured.

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

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

The Bible has noble poetry in it... and some good morals and a wealth of obscenity, and upwards of a thousand lies.

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

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

Always acknowledge a fault. This will throw those in authority off their guard and give you an opportunity to commit more.

If voting made any difference they wouldn't let us do it.

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

There is a charm about the forbidden that makes it unspeakably desirable.

I haven't any right to criticize books, and I don't do it except when I hate them. I often want to criticize Jane Austen, but her books madden me so that I can't conceal my frenzy from the reader; and therefore I have to stop every time I begin. Every time I read Pride and Prejudice I want to dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone.

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.

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

Reality can be beaten with enough imagination.

It's easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.

I have a higher and grander standard of principle than George Washington. He could not lie; I can, but I won't.

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.

There are many humorous things in the world; among them, the white man's notion that he is less savage than the other savages.

Education consists mainly of what we have unlearned.

All right, then, I'll go to hell.

No matter how old you are now. You are never too young or too old for success or going after what you want. Here’s a short list of people who accomplished great things at different ages 1) Helen Keller, at the age of 19 months, became deaf and blind. But that didn’t stop her. She was the first deaf and blind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree. 2) Mozart was already competent on keyboard and violin; he composed from the age of 5. 3) Shirley Temple was 6 when she became a movie star on “Bright Eyes.” 4) Anne Frank was 12 when she wrote the diary of Anne Frank. 5) Magnus Carlsen became a chess Grandmaster at the age of 13. 6) Nadia Comăneci was a gymnast from Romania that scored seven perfect 10.0 and won three gold medals at the Olympics at age 14. 7) Tenzin Gyatso was formally recognized as the 14th Dalai Lama in November 1950, at the age of 15. 8) Pele, a soccer superstar, was 17 years old when he won the world cup in 1958 with Brazil. 9) Elvis was a superstar by age 19. 10) John Lennon was 20 years and Paul Mcartney was 18 when the Beatles had their first concert in 1961. 11) Jesse Owens was 22 when he won 4 gold medals in Berlin 1936. 12) Beethoven was a piano virtuoso by age 23 13) Issac Newton wrote Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica at age 24 14) Roger Bannister was 25 when he broke the 4 minute mile record 15) Albert Einstein was 26 when he wrote the theory of relativity 16) Lance E. Armstrong was 27 when he won the tour de France 17) Michelangelo created two of the greatest sculptures “David” and “Pieta” by age 28 18) Alexander the Great, by age 29, had created one of the largest empires of the ancient world 19) J.K. Rowling was 30 years old when she finished the first manuscript of Harry Potter 20) Amelia Earhart was 31 years old when she became the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean 21) Oprah was 32 when she started her talk show, which has become the highest-rated program of its kind 22) Edmund Hillary was 33 when he became the first man to reach Mount Everest 23) Martin Luther King Jr. was 34 when he wrote the speech “I Have a Dream." 24) Marie Curie was 35 years old when she got nominated for a Nobel Prize in Physics 25) The Wright brothers, Orville (32) and Wilbur (36) invented and built the world's first successful airplane and making the first controlled, powered and sustained heavier-than-air human flight 26) Vincent Van Gogh was 37 when he died virtually unknown, yet his paintings today are worth millions. 27) Neil Armstrong was 38 when he became the first man to set foot on the moon. 28) Mark Twain was 40 when he wrote "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer", and 49 years old when he wrote "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" 29) Christopher Columbus was 41 when he discovered the Americas 30) Rosa Parks was 42 when she refused to obey the bus driver’s order to give up her seat to make room for a white passenger 31) John F. Kennedy was 43 years old when he became President of the United States 32) Henry Ford Was 45 when the Ford T came out. 33) Suzanne Collins was 46 when she wrote "The Hunger Games" 34) Charles Darwin was 50 years old when his book On the Origin of Species came out. 35) Leonardo Da Vinci was 51 years old when he painted the Mona Lisa. 36) Abraham Lincoln was 52 when he became president. 37) Ray Kroc Was 53 when he bought the McDonalds Franchise and took it to unprecedented levels. 38) Dr. Seuss was 54 when he wrote "The Cat in the Hat". 40) Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger III was 57 years old when he successfully ditched US Airways Flight 1549 in the Hudson River in 2009. All of the 155 passengers aboard the aircraft survived 41) Colonel Harland Sanders was 61 when he started the KFC Franchise 42) J.R.R Tolkien was 62 when the Lord of the Ring books came out 43) Ronald Reagan was 69 when he became President of the US 44) Jack Lalane at age 70 handcuffed, shackled, towed 70 rowboats 45) Nelson Mandela was 76 when he became President

Man is the Reasoning Animal. Such is the claim. I think it is open to dispute. Indeed, my experiments have proven to me that he is the Unreasoning Animal... In truth, man is incurably foolish. Simple things which other animals easily learn, he is incapable of learning. Among my experiments was this. In an hour I taught a cat and a dog to be friends. I put them in a cage. In another hour I taught them to be friends with a rabbit. In the course of two days I was able to add a fox, a goose, a squirrel and some doves. Finally a monkey. They lived together in peace; even affectionately. Next, in another cage I confined an Irish Catholic from Tipperary, and as soon as he seemed tame I added a Scotch Presbyterian from Aberdeen. Next a Turk from Constantinople; a Greek Christian from Crete; an Armenian; a Methodist from the wilds of Arkansas; a Buddhist from China; a Brahman from Benares. Finally, a Salvation Army Colonel from Wapping. Then I stayed away for two whole days. When I came back to note results, the cage of Higher Animals was all right, but in the other there was but a chaos of gory odds and ends of turbans and fezzes and plaids and bones and flesh--not a specimen left alive. These Reasoning Animals had disagreed on a theological detail and carried the matter to a Higher Court.