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Mark Twain

220 quotes

“The minister gave out his text and droned along monotonously through an argument that was so prosy that many a head by and by began to nod — and yet it was an argument that dealt in limitless fire and brimstone and thinned the predestined elect down to a company so small as to be hardly worth the saving.”
Mark Twain (1835–1910) said by 1910 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There was no getting around the stubborn fact that taking sweetmeats was only "hooking," while taking bacon and hams and such valuables was plain simple stealing — and there was a command against that in the Bible. So they inwardly resolved that so long as they remained in the business, their piracies should not again be sullied with the crime of stealing.”
Mark Twain (1835–1910) said by 1910 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“To promise not to do a thing is the surest way in the world to make a body want to go and do that very thing.”
Mark Twain (1835–1910) said by 1910 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There is a sumptuous variety about the New England weather that compels the stranger's admiration — and regret. The weather is always doing something there; always attending strictly to business; always getting up new designs and trying them on people to see how they will go. But it gets through more business in spring than in any other season. In the spring I have counted one hundred and thirty-six different kinds of weather inside of twenty-four hours.”
Mark Twain (1835–1910) said by 1910 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Probable nor'east to sou'west winds, varying to the soutard and westard and eastard and points between; high and low barometer, sweeping round from place to place; probable areas of rain, snow, hail, and drought, succeeded or preceded by earthquakes with thunder and lightning.”
Mark Twain (1835–1910) said by 1910 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“One of the brightest gems in the New England weather is the dazzling uncertainty of it.”
Mark Twain (1835–1910) said by 1910 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A gifted person ought to learn English (barring spelling and pronouncing) in thirty hours, French in thirty days, and German in thirty years.”
Mark Twain (1835–1910) said by 1910 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We have not the reverent feeling for the rainbow that the savage has, because we know how it is made. We have lost as much as we gained by prying into that matter.”
Mark Twain (1835–1910) said by 1910 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You may say a cat uses good grammar. Well, a cat does -- but you let a cat get excited once; you let a cat get to pulling fur with another cat on a shed, nights, and you'll hear grammar that will give you the lockjaw. Ignorant people think it's the noise which fighting cats make that is so aggravating, but it ain't so; it's the sickening grammar they use.”
Mark Twain (1835–1910) said by 1910 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Some German words are so long that they have a perspective. Observe these examples:”
Mark Twain (1835–1910) said by 1910 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In German, a young lady has no sex, while a turnip has.”
Mark Twain (1835–1910) said by 1910 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot. BY ORDER OF THE AUTHOR.”
Mark Twain (1835–1910) said by 1910 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth.”
Mark Twain (1835–1910) said by 1910 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Jim was most ruined for a servant, because he got stuck up on account of having seen the devil and been rode by witches.”
Mark Twain (1835–1910) said by 1910 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There warn't anybody at the church, except maybe a hog or two, for there warn't any lock on the door, and hogs likes a puncheon floor in summer-time because it's cool. If you notice, most folks don't go to church only when they've got to; but a hog is different.”
Mark Twain (1835–1910) said by 1910 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“To be, or not to be; that is the bare bodkin.”
Mark Twain (1835–1910) said by 1910 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“H'aint we got all the fools in town on our side? And ain't that a big enough majority in any town?”
Mark Twain (1835–1910) said by 1910 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I was a-trembling, because I'd got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself, "All right, then, I'll go to hell.”
Mark Twain (1835–1910) said by 1910 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I reckon I got to light out for the Territory ahead of the rest, because Aunt Sally she's going to adopt me and sivilize me and I can't stand it. I been there before.”
Mark Twain (1835–1910) said by 1910 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1835–1910) said by 1910 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Many a small thing has been made large by the right kind of advertising.”
Mark Twain (1835–1910) said by 1910 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Whenever the literary German dives into a sentence, that is the last you are going to see of him till he emerges on the other side of his Atlantic with his verb in his mouth.”
Mark Twain (1835–1910) said by 1910 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.”
Mark Twain (1835–1910) said by 1910 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The humorous story is told gravely; the teller does his best to conceal the fact that he even dimly suspects that there is anything funny about it.”
Mark Twain (1835–1910) said by 1910 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“To string incongruities and absurdities together in a wandering and sometimes purposeless way, and seem innocently unaware that they are absurdities, is the basis of the American art, if my position is correct.”
Mark Twain (1835–1910) said by 1910 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When in doubt, tell the truth.”
Mark Twain (1835–1910) said by 1910 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Prosperity is the best protector of principle.”
Mark Twain (1835–1910) said by 1910 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Nothing that grieves us can be called little: by the eternal laws of proportion a child's loss of a doll and a king's loss of a crown are events of the same size.”
Mark Twain (1835–1910) said by 1910 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I have no color prejudices nor caste prejudices nor creed prejudices. All I care to know is that a man is a human being, and that is enough for me; he can't be any worse.”
Mark Twain (1835–1910) said by 1910 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I have no special regard for Satan; but, I can at least claim that I have no prejudice against him. It may even be that I lean a little his way, on account of his not having a fair show. All religions issue bibles against him, and say the most injurious things about him, but we never hear his side. We have none but the evidence for the prosecution, and yet we have rendered the verdict. To my mind, this is irregular. It is un-English, it is un-American; it is French.”
Mark Twain (1835–1910) said by 1910 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The Jew is not a disturber of the peace of any country. Even his enemies will concede that. He is not a loafer, he is not a sot, he is not noisy, he is not a brawler nor a rioter, he is not quarrelsome. In the statistics of crime his presence is conspicuously rare — in all countries. With murder and other crimes of violence he has but little to do: he is a stranger to the hangman. In the police court's daily long roll of "assaults" and "drunk and disorderlies" his name seldom appears ...”
Mark Twain (1835–1910) said by 1910 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A Jewish beggar is not impossible, perhaps; such a thing may exist, but there are few men that can say they have seen that spectacle.”
Mark Twain (1835–1910) said by 1910 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“These facts are all on the credit side of the proposition that the Jew is a good and orderly citizen. Summed up, they certify that he is quiet, peaceable, industrious, unaddicted to high crimes and brutal dispositions; that his family life is commendable; that he is not a burden upon public charities; that he is not a beggar; that in benevolence he is above the reach of competition. These are the very quintessentials of good citizenship.”
Mark Twain (1835–1910) said by 1910 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The Jew has his other side. He has some discreditable ways, though he has not a monopoly of them... He has a reputation for various small forms of cheating, and for practising oppressive usury, and for burning himself out to get the insurance, and for arranging cunning contracts which leave him an exit but lock the other man in, and for smart evasions which find him safe and comfortable just within the strict letter of the law, when court and jury know very well that he has violated the spirit of it.”
Mark Twain (1835–1910) said by 1910 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I wish to come down eighteen hundred years later and refer to a remark made by one of the Latin historians. Some Christians were persecuted in Rome through error, they being 'mistaken for Jews.' The meaning seems plain. These pagans had nothing against Christians, but they were quite ready to persecute Jews. For some reason or other they hated a Jew before they even knew what a Christian was. May I not assume, then, that the persecution of Jews is a thing which antedates Christianity and was not born of Christianity?”
Mark Twain (1835–1910) said by 1910 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In the cotton States, after the war...the Jew came down in force, set up shop on the plantation, supplied all the negro's wants on credit, and at the end of the season was proprietor of the negro's share of the present crop and of part of his share of the next one. Before long, the whites detested the Jew, and it is doubtful if the negro loved him.”
Mark Twain (1835–1910) said by 1910 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I am persuaded that in Russia, Austria, and Germany nine-tenths of the hostility to the Jew comes from the average Christian's inability to compete successfully with the average Jew in business--in either straight business or the questionable sort.”
Mark Twain (1835–1910) said by 1910 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Ages of restriction to the one tool which the law was not able to take from him--his brain--have made that tool singularly competent...”
Mark Twain (1835–1910) said by 1910 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In estimating worldly values the Jew is not shallow, but deep. With precocious wisdom he found out in the morning of time that some men worship rank, some worship heroes, some worship power, some worship God, and that over these ideals they dispute and cannot unite--but that they all worship money; so he made it the end and aim of his life to get it. The cost to him has been heavy; his success has made the whole human race his enemy...”
Mark Twain (1835–1910) said by 1910 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I would throw out the old maxim, ‘My country, right or wrong,’ etc., and instead I would say, ‘My country when she is right.’ Because patriotism is supporting your country all the time, but your government only when it deserves it.”
Mark Twain (1835–1910) first seen 1901 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Reported in The New York Times, March 17, 1901.
“The best of us would rather be popular than right.”
Mark Twain (1835–1910) said by 1910 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“As an active privilege, [free speech] ranks with the privilege of committing murder: we may exercise it if we are willing to take the consequences. Murder is forbidden both in form and in fact; free speech is granted in form but forbidden in fact. By the common estimate both are crimes, and are held in deep odium by all civilized peoples. Murder is sometimes punished, free speech always.”
Mark Twain (1835–1910) said by 1910 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“An unpopular opinion concerning politics or religion lies concealed in the breast of every man; in many cases not only one sample, but several. The more intelligent the man, the larger the freightage of this kind of opinions he carries, and keeps to himself.”
Mark Twain (1835–1910) said by 1910 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[W]e consciously or unconsciously pay more attention to tuning our opinions to our neighbor's pitch and preserving his approval than we do to examining the opinions searchingly and seeing to it that they are right and sound.”
Mark Twain (1835–1910) said by 1910 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He says every man is a moon and has a side which he turns toward nobody: you have to slip around behind if you want to see it.”
Mark Twain (1835–1910) said by 1910 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is just like man's vanity and impertinence to call an animal dumb because it is dumb to his dull perceptions.”
Mark Twain (1835–1910) said by 1910 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It may be called the Master Passion—the hunger for Self-Approval.”
Mark Twain (1835–1910) said by 1910 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The fact that man knows right from wrong proves his intellectual superiority to the other creatures; but the fact that he can do wrong proves his moral inferiority to any creature that cannot.”
Mark Twain (1835–1910) said by 1910 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“But the truth is, that when a Library expels a book of mine and leaves an unexpurgated Bible lying around where unprotected youth and age can get hold of it, the deep unconscious irony of it delights me and doesn't anger me.”
Mark Twain (1835–1910) said by 1910 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Citizenship? We have none! In place of it we teach patriotism which Samuel Johnson said a hundred and forty or a hundred and fifty years ago was the last refuge of the scoundrel -- and I believe that he was right. I remember when I was a boy and I heard repeated time and time again the phrase, 'My country, right or wrong, my country!' How absolutely absurd is such an idea. How absolutely absurd to teach this idea to the youth of the country.”
Mark Twain (1835–1910) said by 1910 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source