Twain Wisdom Quotes

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).

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.

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.

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

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

Be respectful to your superiors, if you have any.

A man once said, 'All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence; then success is sure.' Mark Twain, you know. He had a fine mustache. Men of wisdom so often do.

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.

To believe yourself brave is to be brave; it is the one only essential thing.

It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.

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 druther not.

The weakest of all weak things is a virtue which has not been tested in the fire.

I was seldom able to see an opportunity until it had ceased to be one.

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

Yes - en I's rich now, come to look at it. I owns myself, en I's wuth eight hund'd dollars. I wisht I had de money, I wouldn' want no mo'.

We can’t reach old age by another man’s road. My habits protect my life but they would assassinate you.

I read from Mark Twain's lips one or two of his good stories. He has his own way of thinking, saying and doing everything. I feel the twinkle of his eye in his handshake. Even while he utters his cynical wisdom in an indescribably droll voice, he makes you feel that his heart is a tender Iliad of human sympathy.

What a hell of a heaven it will be when they get all these hypocrites assembled there!

The mere knowledge of a fact is pale; but when you come to realize your fact, it takes on color. It is all the difference between hearing of a man being stabbed to the heart, and seeing it done.

Be wise as a serpent and wary as a dove!

Никога не съм позволявал на училището да попречи на образованието ми.

It is by the fortune of God that, in this country, we have three benefits: freedom of speech, freedom of thought, and the wisdom never to use either.

Two things which are the peculiar domain of the heart, not the mind—politics and religion. He doesn’t want to know the other side. He wants arguments and statistics for his own side, and nothing more.

Experience is an author’s most valuable asset; experience is the thing that puts the muscle and the breath and the warm blood into the book he writes.

The mania for giving the Government power to meddle with the private affairs of cities or citizens is likely to cause endless trouble.

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

So I learned then, that gold in it's native state is but dull, unornamental stuff, and that only low-born metals excite the admiration of the ignorant with an ostentatious glitter. However, like the rest of the world, I still go underrating men of gold and glorifying men of mica. Commonplace human nature cannot rise above that.

The perfection of wisdom, and the end of true philosophy is to proportion our wants to our possessions, our ambitions to our capacities, we will then be a happy and a virtuous people.

And what does it amount to?" said Satan, with his evil chuckle. "Nothing at all. You gain nothing; you always come out where you went in. For a million years the race has gone on monotonously propagating itself and monotonously reperforming this dull nonsense--to what end? No wisdom can guess! Who gets a profit out of it? Nobody but a parcel of usurping little monarchs and nobilities who despise you; would feel defiled if you touched them; would shut the door in your face if you proposed to call; whom you slave for, fight for, die for, and are not ashamed of it, but proud; whose existence is a perpetual insult to you and you are afraid to resent it; who are mendicants supported by your alms, yet assume toward you the airs of benefactor toward beggar; who address you in the language of master to slave, and are answered in in the language of slave to master; who are worshiped by you with your mouth, while in your heart--if you have one--you despise yourselves for it. The first man was hypocrite and a coward, qualities which have not yet failed in his line; it is the foundation upon which all civilizations have been built. Drink to their perpetuation! Drink to their augmentation! Drink to--" Then he saw by our faces how much we were hurt, and he cut his sentence short and stopped chuckling...

I'll not go where there is any of that sort of thing going on, again. It's the sure way, and the only sure way;

It was with much satisfaction that I recognized the wisdom of having told this candid gentleman, in the beginning, that my name was Smith.

Human nature is all alike.

What, sir, would the people of the earth be without woman? They would be scarce, sir, almighty scarce. “Woman—An Opinion” (speech) Some

Who gave his angels eternal happiness unearned, yet required his other children to earn it?

A proof once established is better left so.

Hemingway is overrated, Twain is even more lost at sea, And all truths point to the mouth of a woman, Where both her whispers and her screams, Are born. Pour another glass, Beer, wine, whiskey, I don't care, So long as its wisdom is sharp, And it tells lies instead of promises.

Each of us knows it all, and knows he knows it all—the rest, to a man, are fools and eluded. One man knows there is a hell, the next one knows there isn’t; one man knows monarchy is best, the next one knows it isn’t; one man knows high tariff is right, the next man knows it isn’t; one man knows there are witches, the next one knows there aren’t; one sect knows its religion is the only true one, there are sixty-four thousand five hundred million sects that know it isn’t so.

Забелязвам, че колкото по-здраво работя, толкова по-голям късмет имам.

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

Had I never loved, I never would have been unhappy; but I turn to Him who can save, and if His wisdom does not will my expected union, I know He will give me strength to bear my lot.

The average human being is a perverse creature; and when he isn’t that, he is a practical joker. The result to the other person concerned is about the same: that is, he is made to suffer.

A hypocritical businessman, whose fortune had been the misfortune of many others, told Mark Twain piously, “Before I die I intend to make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. I want to climb to the top of Mount Sinai and read the Ten Commandments aloud.” “I have a better idea,” suggested Twain. “Why don’t you stay right at home in Boston and keep them?

Mark Twain said, “We should be careful to get out of an experience all the wisdom that is in it—not 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.

We have to be despised by somebody whom we regard as above us or we are not happy; we have to have somebody to worship and envy or we cannot be content.

Make it a point to do something every day that you don’t want to do. This is the golden rule for acquiring the habit of doing your duty without pain.

There are two times in a man’s life when he should not speculate: when he can’t afford it, and when he can.

My father was an amazing man. The older I got, the smarter he got.

Everybody has heard of the great Heidelberg Tun, and most people have seen it, no doubt. It is a wine-cask as big as a cottage, and some traditions say it holds eighteen hundred thousand bottles, and other traditions say it holds eighteen hundred million barrels. I think it likely that one of these statements is a mistake, and the other is a lie. However, the mere matter of capacity is a thing of no sort of consequence, since the cask is empty, and indeed has always been empty, history says. An empty cask the size of a cathedral could excite but little emotion in me. I do not see any wisdom in building a monster cask to hoard up emptiness in, when you can get a better quality, outside, any day, free of expense.

The Whites always mean well when they take human fish out of the ocean and try to make them dry and warm and happy and comfortable in a chicken coop; but the kindest-hearted white man can always be depended on to prove himself inadequate when he deals with savages. He cannot turn the situation around and imagine how he would like it to have a well-meaning savage transfer him from his house and his church and his clothes and his books and his choice food to a hideous wilderness of sand and rocks and snow, and ice and sleet and storm and blistering sun, with no shelter, no bed, no covering for his and his family's naked bodies, and nothing to eat but snakes and grubs and offal. This would be a hell to him; and if he had any wisdom he would know that his own civilization is a hell to the savage - but he hasn't any, and has never had any; and for lack of it he shut up those poor natives in the unimaginable perdition of his civilization, committing his crime with the very best intentions, and saw those poor creatures waste away under his tortures; and gazed at it, vaguely troubled and sorrowful, and wondered what could be the matter with them.

The problem is, the phrase is dead wrong. Hindsight is not 20–20. Not even close. Our view of the past, in fact, is hardly clearer than our view of the future. While we know more about a past event than a future one, our understanding of the factors that shaped it is severely limited. Not only that, because we think we see what happened clearly—hindsight being 20–20 and all—we often aren’t open to knowing more. “We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it—and stop there,” as Mark Twain once said, “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.” The cat’s hindsight, in other words, distorts her view. The past should be our teacher, not our master.

I have caught a glimpse of the faces of several Moorish women (for they are only human, and will expose their faces for the admiration of a Christian dog when no male Moor is by), and I am full of veneration for the wisdom that leads them to cover up such atrocious ugliness.

In making this substitution I had drawn upon the wisdom of a very remote source — the wisdom of my boyhood — for the true statesman does not despise any wisdom, howsoever lowly may be its origin:  in my boyhood I had always saved my pennies and contributed buttons to the foreign missionary cause.

Life should begin with age and its privileges and accumulations, and end with youth and its capacity to splendidly enjoy such advantages.... It’s an epitome of life. The first half of it consists of the capacity to enjoy without the chance. The last half consists of the chance without the capacity. Letter

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. Mark Twain

As Mark Twain observed, “Genuine humor is replete with wisdom.

PLAYBOY OF THE WESTERN WORLD AND RIDERS TO THE SEA, J. M. Synge. 80pp. 0-486-27562-0 THE

As Mark Twain famously offered, “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” Where

If a person offends you and you are in doubt as to whether it was intentional or not, do not resort to extreme measures. Simply watch your chance and hit him with a brick.

As long as you’re in your right mind don’t you ever pray for twins. Twins amount to a permanent riot. And there

ain’t any real difference between triplets and an insurrection. “The Babies

There is no such thing as “the Queen’s English.” The property has gone into the hands of a joint stock company and we own the bulk of the shares! Following the Equator

There’s a good spot tucked away somewhere in everybody. You’ll be a long time finding it sometimes.

បោះបង់ការជក់បារីចោលគឺជារឿងស្រួលបំផុតនៅលើពិភពលោក។ ខ្ញុំដឹងពីព្រោះខ្ញុំបានធ្វើវារាប់ពាន់ដងមកហើយ។

But now a thought occurs to me. My own history would really seem so tame contrasted with that of my ancestors, that it is simply wisdom to leave it unwritten until I am hanged. If some other biographies I have read had stopped with the ancestry until a like event occurred, it would have been a felicitous thing, for the reading public. How does it strike you? AWFUL,

In making this substitution I had drawn upon the wisdom of a very remote source—the wisdom of my boyhood—for the true statesman does not despise any wisdom, howsoever lowly may be its origin:

Ours is the “land of the free”—nobody denies that—nobody challenges it. (Maybe it is because we won’t let other people testify.) —Roughing It, 1872, ch. 54 (commenting on mistreatment of Chinese in the West)

And what does it amount to?" said Satan, with his evil chuckle. "Nothing at all. You gain nothing; you always come out where you went in. For a million years the race has gone on monotonously propagating itself and monotonously reperforming this dull nonsense--to what end? No wisdom can guess! Who gets a profit out of it? Nobody but a parcel of usurping little monarchs and nobilities who despise you; would feel defiled if you touched them; would shut the door in your face if you proposed to call; whom you slave for, fight for, die for, and are not ashamed of it, but proud; whose existence is a perpetual insult to you and you are afraid to resent it; who are mendicants supported by your alms, yet assume toward you the airs of benefactor toward beggar; who address you in the language of master to slave, and are answered in the language of slave to master; who are worshiped by you with your mouth, while in your heart--if you have one--you despise yourselves for it. The first man was a hypocrite and a coward, qualities which have not yet failed in his line; it is the foundation upon which all civilizations have been built.

Kişinin kafası ve kalbi boşsa, karnı tok olmuş, neye yarar ! Bugün öğrendiklerimi hep aklımda tutacak, aldığım dersi hiç unutmayacak, halkımı bu sıkıntılardan kurtaracağım. Ne de olsa insanın kalbini yumuşatan da, içine iyilik ve cömertlik aşılayan da bilgi değil mi ?" / Çalınan Taç / The Prince and the Pauper

The reader must not imagine that he is to find in it wisdom, brilliancy, fertility of invention, ingenuity of construction, excellence of form, purity of style, perfection of imagery, truth to nature, clearness of statement, humanly possible situations, humanly possible people, fluent narrative, connected sequence of events

IN THINKING ABOUT this chapter and about the limits of our perception, a familiar, oft-repeated phrase kept popping into my head: “Hindsight is 20–20.” When we hear it, we normally just nod in agreement—yes, of course—accepting that we can look back on what happened, see it with total clarity, learn from it, and draw the right conclusions. The problem is, the phrase is dead wrong. Hindsight is not 20–20. Not even close. Our view of the past, in fact, is hardly clearer than our view of the future. While we know more about a past event than a future one, our understanding of the factors that shaped it is severely limited. Not only that, because we think we see what happened clearly—hindsight being 20–20 and all—we often aren’t open to knowing more. “We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it—and stop there,” as Mark Twain once said, “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.” The cat’s hindsight, in other words, distorts her view. The past should be our teacher, not our master.

The prize was delivered to Tom with as much effusion as the superintendent could pump up under the circumstances; but it lacked somewhat of the true gush, for the poor fellow's instinct taught him that there was a mystery here that could not well bear the light, perhaps; it was simply preposterous that this boy had warehoused two thousand sheaves of Scriptural wisdom on his premises—a dozen would strain his capacity, without a doubt.

Few people would realise that it is much harder to write one of Owen Seaman's "funny" poems in Punch than to write one of the Archbishop of Canterbury's sermons. Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn is a greater work than Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, and Charles Dickens's creation of Mr. Pickwick did more for the elevation of the human race—I say it in all seriousness—than Cardinal Newman's Lead, Kindly Light, Amid the Encircling Gloom. Newman only cried out for light in the gloom of a sad world. Dickens gave it.

Usually adolescent rebels are quickly humbled because they overestimate their own truth and underestimate the truth of their elders. As Mark Twain famously put it, “When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years.” One purpose of youthful rebellion is to put one’s self at odds with adult authority not so much to defeat it as to be defeated by it. One opposes it to discover its logic and validity for one’s self. And by failing to defeat it, one comes to it, and to greater maturity, through experience rather than mere received wisdom. Of course, every new generation alters the adult authority it ultimately joins. But if the young win their rebellion against the old, their rite of passage to maturity is cut short and they are falsely inflated rather than humbled. Uninitiated, they devalue history rather than find direction in it, and feel entitled to break sharply and even recklessly from the past. The sixties generation of youth is very likely the first generation in American history to have actually won its adolescent rebellion against its elders. One of the reasons for this, if not the primary reason, is that this generation came of age during the age of white guilt, which meant that its rebellion ran into an increasingly uncertain adult authority. Baby boomers, already rather inflated from growing up in the unparalleled prosperity of postwar America, were inflated further by an adult authority that often backed down in the face of their rebellion. It doesn’t matter, for example, that there was honor in America’s acknowledgment of moral wrong in the area of race. An acknowledgement of wrong was an acknowledgment of wrong, and it brought a loss of moral authority—and, thus, adult authority—despite the good it achieved.

Death and taxes are the only two certainties in life, as Mark Twain once said. Or was it Benjamin Franklin?

A man once said, ‘All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence; then success is sure.’ Mark Twain, you know. He had a fine mustache. Men of wisdom so often do.

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. Mark Twain Have you noticed that Mark Twain’s words are still valid?

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.” — Mark Twain — Mark Twain at Your Fingertips

As Mark Twain reportedly said, “It’s not what you don’t know that gets you into trouble, it’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.

Writing is easy. All you have to do is cross out the wrong words. Mark Twain (1835 – 1910)

The problem is, the phrase is dead wrong. Hindsight is not 20-20. Not even close. Our view of the past, in fact, is hardly clearer than our view of the future. While we know more about a past event than a future one, our understanding of the factors that shaped it is severely limited. Not only that, because we think we see what happened clearly—hindsight being 20-20 and all—we often aren’t open to knowing more. “We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it—and stop there,” as Mark Twain once said, “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.” The cat’s hindsight, in other words, distorts her view. The past should be our teacher, not our master.

Mark Twain once complained: "These are sad days in literature. Homer is dead. Shakespeare is dead. And I myself am not feeling at all well.

Science does not need religion. Religion does not need science. And the twain shall never meet

Twain: “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.

The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can’t read.” —MARK TWAIN

We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it—and stop there,” as Mark Twain once said, “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.

We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it—and stop there,” as Mark Twain once said, “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.” The cat’s hindsight, in other words, distorts her view. The past should be our teacher, not our master.

Kuna siku mbili tu za muhimu zaidi katika maisha yako kama alivyosema Mark Twain: Siku uliyozaliwa na siku uliyojua kwa nini ulizaliwa. Siku utakapojua kwa nini ulizaliwa utakuwa tajiri, wa mali na hekima.

To be a patriot, one had to say, and keep on saying, " Our country, right or wrong," and urge on the little war. Have you not perceived that that phrase is an insult to the nation? Glances at History

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 a man. The Tragedy of Pudd’nhead Wilson

In my life and work, I’ve seen the darkest parts of the human soul. (At least I hope they are the darkest.) That has helped me see more clearly the brightness of the human spirit. Feeling the sting of violence myself has helped me feel more keenly the hand of human kindness. Given the frenzy and the power of the various violence industries, the fact that most Americans live without being violent is a sign of something wonderful in us. In resisting both the darker sides of our species and the darker sides of our heritage, it is everyday Americans, not the icons of big-screen vengeance, who are the real heroes. Abraham Lincoln referred to the “Better angels of our nature,” and they must surely exist, for most of us make it through every day with decency and cooperation. Having spent years preparing for the worst, I have finally arrived at this wisdom: Though the world is a dangerous place, it is also a safe place. You and I have survived some extraordinary risks, particularly given that every day we move in, around, and through powerful machines that could kill us without missing a cylinder: jet airplanes, subways, busses, escalators, elevators, motorcycles, cars—conveyances that carry a few of us to injury but most of us to the destinations we have in mind. We are surrounded by toxic chemicals, and our homes are hooked up to explosive gasses and lethal currents of electricity. Most frightening of all, we live among armed and often angry countrymen. Taken together, these things make every day a high-stakes obstacle course our ancestors would shudder at, but the fact is we are usually delivered through it. Still, rather than be amazed at the wonder of it all, millions of people are actually looking for things to worry about. Near the end of his life, Mark Twain wisely said, “I have had a great many troubles, but most of them never happened.

Now that I'm on my fourth book on values, I feel a bit inadequate. I'm using a little bit of Woody-Allen-esque self-deprecation, but basically, that is true; it is hard to study legends like Twain, Socrates, King, Shaw, Gandhi and Keller and not feel like an underachiever.

The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex, overwhelming tasks into small, manageable tasks, and then starting on the first one.” -Mark Twain

Mark Twain defined a classic as something everyone wants to have read and nobody wants to read. One classic that deserves the attention of all investors is John Maynard Keynes’s General Theory of Employment, and more specifically chapter 12, “The State of Long-Term Expectation.” Expectations are embedded in all the decisions we make, especially investment decisions, but we rarely step back and consider how and why we form our expectations. Keynes guides this reflection.

What has become of the Golden Rule? It exists, it continues to sparkle, and is well taken care of. It is Exhibit A in the Church’s assets, and we pull it out every Sunday and give it an airing...It is strictly religious furniture, like an acolyte, or a contribution-plate, or any of those things. It is never intruded into business.” Mark Twain “Noah and a few like him perceived that the continent was indeed finite, and that venal office-holders, legislators in particular, could be persuaded to toss great hunks of it up for grabs, and to toss them in such a way as to have them land where Noah and his kind were standing. “Thus did a handful of rapacious citizens come to control all that was worth controlling in America. Thus was the savage and stupid and entirely inappropriate and unnecessary and humorless American class system created. Honest, industrious, peaceful citizens were classed as bloodsuckers if they asked to be paid a living wage. And they saw that praise was reserved henceforth for those who devised ways of getting paid enormously for committing crimes against which no law had been passed. Thus the American dream turned belly up, turned green, bobbed to the scummy surface of cupidity unlimited, filled with gas, and went bang in the noonday sun.” Kurt Vonnegut Jr. from God Bless You Mr. Rosewater

You remember the one gleam of jollity that shot across our dismal sojourn in the rain & mud of Angel’s Camp—I mean that day we sat around the tavern stove & heard that chap tell about the frog & how they filled him with shot. And you remember how we quoted from the yarn & laughed over it, out there on the hillside while you & dear old Stoker panned & washed. I jotted the story down in my note-book that day, & would have been glad to get ten or fifteen dollars for it—I was just that blind. But then we were so hard up. I published that story, & it became widely known in America, India, China, England,—& the reputation it made for me has paid me thousands & thousands of dollars since.

he decided to try his hand as a publisher. His first book was his greatest success: Ulysses S. Grant’s memoirs. Grant had been facing financial ruin after his presidency, and Twain offered him an outrageous sum to publish the work, sure that it would be a hit. Grant wrote the book with a death sentence hanging over his head, suffering from terminal cancer. Twain wrote of Grant, “I then believed he would live several months. He was still adding little perfecting details to his book, and preface, among other things. He was entirely through a few days later. Since then the lack of any strong interest to employ his mind has enabled the tedious weariness to kill him. I think his book kept him alive several months. He was a very great man and superlatively good.” Grant died days after finishing his memoir, which was a huge success, restoring his family’s fortunes and making Twain even richer.

The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug. ― Mark Twain, The Wit and Wisdom of Mark Twain