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Mark Twain

220 quotes

“No one doubts—certainly not I—that the mind exercises a powerful influence over the body. From the beginning of time, the sorcerer, the interpreter of dreams, the fortune-teller, the charlatan, the quack, the wild medicine-man, the educated physician, the mesmerist, and the hypnotist have made use of the client's imagination to help them in their work. They have all recognized the potency and availability of that force. Physicians cure many patients with a bread pill; they know that where the disease is only a fancy, the patient's confidence in the doctor will make the bread pill effective.”
Mark Twain (1835–1910) said by 1910 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Within the last quarter of a century, in America, several sects of curers have appeared under various names and have done notable things in the way of healing ailments without the use of medicines. There are the Mind Cure, the Faith Cure, the Prayer Cure, the Mental Science Cure, and the Christian-Science Cure; and apparently they all do their miracles with the same old, powerful instrument—the patient's imagination. Differing names, but no difference in the process. But they do not give that instrument the credit; each sect claims that its way differs from the ways of the others.”
Mark Twain (1835–1910) said by 1910 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Let us consider that we are all partially insane. It will explain us to each other; it will unriddle many riddles; it will make clear and simple many things which are involved in haunting and harassing difficulties and obscurities now.”
Mark Twain (1835–1910) said by 1910 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Herodotus says, "Very few things happen at the right time, and the rest do not happen at all. The conscientious historian will correct these defects.”
Mark Twain (1835–1910) said by 1910 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“From the time a woman is seven years old till she dies of old age, she is ready for action, and competent. As competent as the candlestick to receive the candle. But man is only briefly competent:...After fifty his performance is of poor quality; the intervals between are wide, and its satisfactions of no great quality to either party; whereas his great-grandmother is as good as new.”
Mark Twain (1835–1910) said by 1910 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When Adam ate the apple in the Garden and learned how to multiply and replenish, the other animals learned the Art, too, by watching Adam. It was cunning of them, it was neat; for they got all that was worth having out of the apple without tasting it and afflicting themselves with the disastrous Moral Sense, the parent of all the immoralities.”
Mark Twain (1835–1910) said by 1910 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The law of God, as quite plainly expressed in woman's construction, is this: There shall be no limit put upon your intercourse with the other sex sexually, at any time of life.”
Mark Twain (1835–1910) said by 1910 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Solomon, who was one of the Deity's favorites, had a copulation cabinet composed of seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines. To save his life he could not have kept two of these young creatures satisfactorily refreshed, even if he had fifteen experts to help him. Necessarily almost the entire thousand had to go hungry for years and years on a stretch. Conceive of a man hardhearted enough to look daily upon all that suffering and not be moved to mitigate it.”
Mark Twain (1835–1910) said by 1910 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Only laughter can blow [a colossal humbug] to rags and atoms at a blast. Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand.”
Mark Twain (1835–1910) said by 1910 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There is no God, no universe, no human race, no earthly life, no heaven, no hell. It is all a Dream, a grotesque and foolish dream. Nothing exists but you. And You are but a Thought — a vagrant Thought, a useless Thought, a homeless Thought, wandering forlorn among the empty eternities.”
Mark Twain (1835–1910) said by 1910 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The bicycle had what is called the 'wabbles', and had them very badly. In order to keep my position, a good many things were required of me, and in every instance the thing required was against nature. Against nature, but not against the laws of nature.”
Mark Twain (1835–1910) said by 1910 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Try as you may, you don't get down as you would from a horse, you get down as you would from a house afire. You make a spectacle of yourself every time.”
Mark Twain (1835–1910) said by 1910 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The self-taught man seldom knows anything accurately, and he does not know a tenth as much as he could have known if he had worked under teachers;”
Mark Twain (1835–1910) said by 1910 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There are those who imagine that the unlucky accidents of life—life's "experiences"—are in some way useful to us. I wish I could find out how. I never know one of them to happen twice. They always change off and swap around and catch you on your inexperienced side.”
Mark Twain (1835–1910) said by 1910 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Before taking final leave of me, my instructor inquired concerning my physical strength, and I was able to inform him that I hadn't any.”
Mark Twain (1835–1910) said by 1910 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I started out alone to seek adventures. You don't really have to seek them—that is nothing but a phrase—they come to you.”
Mark Twain (1835–1910) said by 1910 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I have seen it stated that no expert is quick enough to run over a dog; that a dog is always able to skip out of his way. I think that that may be true; but I think that the reason he couldn't run over the dog was because he was trying to. I did not try to run over any dog. But I ran over every dog that came along.”
Mark Twain (1835–1910) said by 1910 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Get a bicycle. You will not regret it, if you live.”
Mark Twain (1835–1910) said by 1910 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We began to stir against slavery. Hearts grew soft, here, there, and yonder. There was no place in the land where the seeker could not find some small budding sign of pity for the slave. No place in all the land but one—the pulpit. It yielded at last; it always does. It fought a strong and stubborn fight, and then did what it always does, joined the procession—at the tail end. Slavery fell. The slavery text remained; the practice changed, that was all.”
Mark Twain (1835–1910) said by 1910 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Annihilation has no terrors for me, because I have already tried it before I was born—a hundred million years—and I have suffered more in an hour, in this life, than I remember to have suffered in the whole hundred million years put together. There was a peace, a serenity, an absence of all sense of responsibility, an absence of worry, an absence of care, grief, perplexity; and the presence of a deep content and unbroken satisfaction in that hundred million years of holiday which I look back upon with a tender longing and with a grateful desire to resume, when the opportunity comes.”
Mark Twain (1835–1910) said by 1910 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: p. 69 of Vol. II of The Complete and Authoritative Edition, 2013, University of California Press
“France has neither winter nor summer nor morals. Apart from these drawbacks it is a fine country.”
Mark Twain (1835–1910) said by 1910 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“God's inhumanity to man makes countless thousands mourn.”
Mark Twain (1835–1910) said by 1910 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“France has usually been governed by prostitutes.”
Mark Twain (1835–1910) said by 1910 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The radical invents the views. When he has worn them out the conservative adopts them.”
Mark Twain (1835–1910) said by 1910 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Familiarity breeds contempt — and children.”
Mark Twain (1835–1910) said by 1910 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Good breeding consists in concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of the other person.”
Mark Twain (1835–1910) said by 1910 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Nature knows no indecencies; man invents them.”
Mark Twain (1835–1910) said by 1910 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Love seems the swiftest, but it is the slowest of all growths. No man or woman really knows what perfect love is until they have been married a quarter of a century.”
Mark Twain (1835–1910) said by 1910 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Death, the only immortal who treats us all alike, whose pity and whose peace and whose refuge are for all — the soiled and the pure, the rich and the poor, the loved and the unloved.”
Mark Twain (1835–1910) said by 1910 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Surely the test of a novel's characters is that you feel a strong interest in them and their affairs—the good to be successful, the bad to suffer failure. Well, in John Ward, you feel no divided interest, no discriminating interest—you want them all to land in hell together, and right away.”
Mark Twain (1835–1910) said by 1910 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Fame is a vapor; popularity an accident; the only earthly certainty is oblivion.”
Mark Twain (1835–1910) said by 1910 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“None but the dead have free speech.”
Mark Twain (1835–1910) said by 1910 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What is the difference between a taxidermist & a tax-collector? The taxidermist only takes your skin.”
Mark Twain (1835–1910) said by 1910 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Some men worship rank, some worship heroes, some worship power, some worship God, & over these ideals they dispute & cannot unite — but they all worship money.”
Mark Twain (1835–1910) said by 1910 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You can't depend on your judgment when your imagination is out of focus.”
Mark Twain (1835–1910) said by 1910 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Education consists mainly in what we have unlearned.”
Mark Twain (1835–1910) said by 1910 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Man was made at the end of the week's work, when God was tired.”
Mark Twain (1835–1910) said by 1910 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Only one thing is impossible for God: to find any sense in any copyright law on the planet.”
Mark Twain (1835–1910) said by 1910 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Geological time is not money. A pity too; for it would have abolished poverty from the earth. Let us adopt geological time, then time being money, — there will be no more poverty. We are all missionaries (propagandists of our views). Each of us disapproves of the other missionaries; in fact detests them, as a rule. I am one of the herd myself. It is noticeable that the professional always uses the one license: "Go ye into all the world," and ignores the Golden Rule which would restrain him from entering China and one or two other countries where he is not wanted and is not welcome.”
Mark Twain (1835–1910) said by 1910 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Not a single right is indestructible: a new might can at any time abolish it, hence, man possesses not a single permanent right. God is Might (and He is shifty, malicious, and uncertain).”
Mark Twain (1835–1910) said by 1910 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In God We Trust." It is the choicest compliment that has ever been paid us, and the most gratifying to our feelings. It is simple, direct, gracefully phrased: it always sounds well — In God We Trust. I don't believe it would sound any better if it were true. And in a measure it is true — half the nation trusts in Him. That half has decided it.”
Mark Twain (1835–1910) said by 1910 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In the beginning of a change, the patriot is a scarce man, and brave, and hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a patriot”
Mark Twain (1835–1910) said by 1910 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The difference between a Miracle and a Fact is exactly the difference between a mermaid and a seal.”
Mark Twain (1835–1910) said by 1910 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.”
Mark Twain (1835–1910) said by 1910 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Mark Twain (2016). “The Wit and Wisdom of Mark Twain”, p.97, Chartwell
“Biographies are but clothes and buttons of the man — the biography of the man himself cannot be written.”
Mark Twain (1835–1910) said by 1910 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Mark Twain's Autobiography (1924), Vol. I, p. 2
“But who prays for Satan? Who in eighteen centuries, has had the common humanity to pray for the one sinner that needed it most, our one fellow and brother who most needed a friend yet had not a single one, the one sinner among us all who had the highest and clearest right to every Christian's daily and nightly prayers, for the plain and unassailable reason that his was the first and greatest need, he being among sinners the supremest?”
Mark Twain (1835–1910) said by 1910 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Mark Twain (1960). “The autobiography of Mark Twain: including chapters now published for the first time
“It has become a sarcastic proverb that a thing must be true if you saw it in a newspaper. That is the opinion intelligent people have of that lying vehicle in a nutshell. But the trouble is that the stupid people–who constitute the grand overwhelming majority of this and all other nations–do believe and are moulded and convinced by what they get out of a newspaper, and there is where the harm lies."... "That awful power, the public opinion of a nation, is created in America by a horde of ignorant, self-complacent simpletons who failed at ditching and shoemaking and fetched up in journalism on their way to the poorhouse.”
Mark Twain (1835–1910) first seen 1873 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: – Mark Twain "License of the Press" speech, 1873
“I was convinced that Lake Como was a large basin of water similar to the Tahoe, also surrounded by immense mountains whose slopes reach the shores, but here the lake is not a basin, since the banks are articulated like those of a stream and is a quarter or two thirds wide of the Mississippi. Along the coast there is not a single strip of flat land, but endless chains of mountains which suddenly emerge from the lake surface and rise towards the sky for one hundred or two hundred feet, constantly varying in shape. The rocky ridges are covered with numerous plant species and dotted with white villas that peek through lush foliage. Even on the top of the promontory we saw pretty little houses perched on picturesque pinnacles, more than a thousand feet above our heads.”
Mark Twain (1835–1910) first seen 1896 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Mark Twain, "The innocents abroad", New York, 1896
“I believe I am not interested to know whether Vivisection produces results that are profitable to the human race or doesn't. To know that the results are profitable to the race would not remove my hostility to it. The pains which it inflicts upon unconsenting animals is the basis of my enmity towards it, and it is to me sufficient justification of the enmity without looking further. It is so distinctly a matter of feeling with me, and is so strong and so deeply-rooted in my make and constitution, that I am sure I could not even see a vivisector vivisected with anything more than a sort of qualified satisfaction.”
Mark Twain (1835–1910) first seen 1899 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Sidney G. Trist, Editor of the Animals' Friend Magazine, in his capacity as Secretary of the London Anti-Vivisection Society (26 May 1899), in Mark Twain's Notebooks, ed. Carlo De Vito (Black Dog & Leventhal, …
“I wanted to damage every man in the place, and every woman--and not in their bodies or in their estate, but in their vanity--the place where feeble and foolish people are most vulnerable. So I disguised myself and came back and studied you. You were easy game. You had an old and lofty reputation for honesty, and naturally you were proud of it — it was your treasure of treasures, the very apple of your eye. As soon as I found out that you carefully and vigilantly kept yourselves and your children out of temptation, I knew how to proceed. Why, you simple creatures, the weakest of all weak things is a virtue which has not been tested in the fire.”
Mark Twain (1835–1910) first seen 1900 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg", ch. III, in The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg and Other Stories and Essays (1900)