Quotes by Mark Twain

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Age	Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don't mind, it doesn't matter.
Annoyance	There is nothing so annoying as to have two people talking when you're busy interrupting.
Babies	A soiled baby, with a neglected nose, cannot be conscientiously regarded as a thing of beauty.
Bible	It ain't the part of the Bible that I can't understand that bother me, it's the parts that I do understand
Books	Just the omission of Jane Austen's books alone would make a fairly good library out of a library that hadn't a book in it.
Books	A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody has read.
Cats	If man could be crossed with the cat, it would improve the man but deteriorate the cat.
Children	Familiarity breeds contempt--and children.
Christ	If Christ were here now there is one thing he would not be -- a Christian
Christians	I admire the serene assurance of those who have religous faith. It is wonderful to observe the calm confidence of a Christian with four aces.
Civilization	Civilization is a limitless multiplication of unnecessary necessities.
Cloths	Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.
Cold	Cold! If the thermometer had been an inch longer we'd all have frozen to death!
Congress	There is no distinctly American criminal class - except Congress.
Courage	Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear - not absence of fear.
Coveting	He had discovered a great law of human action, without knowing it - namely, that in order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to obtain. - ("The Adventures of Tom Sawyer", Chapter 2)
Diplomacy	The principle of give and take is the principle of diplomacy -- give on and take ten.
Dishonesty	There's one way to find out if a man is honest; ask him; if he says yes, you know he is crooked.
Dogs	If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principle difference between a dog and a man.
Duels	I thoroughly disapprove of duels. If a man should challenge me, I would take him kindly and forgivingly by the hand and lead him to a quiet place and kill him.
Education	Soap and education are not as sudden as massacre but they are more deadly in the long run.
Exercise	I have never taken any exercise except sleeping and resting.
Facts	Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please.
Faith	There are those who scoff at the school boy, calling him frivolous and shallow. Yet it was the school boy who said, "Faith is believing what you know ain't so." - (American author & humorist)
Fame	Fame is a vapor; popularity an accident; the only earthly certainty is oblivion.
Fault	Always acknowledge a fault. This will throw those in authority off their guard and give you an opportunity to commit more.
Food	Part of the secret of a success in life is to eat what you like and let the food fight it out inside.
Foreigners	Foreigners always spell better than they pronounce.
France	In Paris they simply stared when I spoke to them in French; I never did succeed in making those idiots understand their language.
Freedoms	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.
Friends	It takes your enemy and your friend, working together, to hurt you; the one to slander you, and the other to bring the news to you.
Funerals	I did not attend his funeral, but I wrote a nice letter saying I approved of it.
Gadgets	I got so frustrated with the infernal contraption that I traded it for a dog, and shot the dog.
Germany	Germany, the diseased world's bathhouse.
Golf	Golf is a good walk spoiled.
Government	Suppose you were an idiot... And suppose you were a member of Congress... But I repeat myself.
Grammar	Whenever the literary German dives into a sentence, that is the last you are going to see of him until he emerges on the other side of his Atlantic with his verb in his mouth.
Grammar	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.
Health	Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint.
Health	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 rather not.
Hell	When I think of number of disagreeable people that I know who have gone to a better world, I am sure hell won't be bad at all.
History	Often it does seem a pity that Noah and his party did not miss the boat.
Honesty	Honesty is the best policy - when there is money in it.
Humanity	A man never reaches that dizzy height of wisdom that he can no longer be led by the nose.
Humor	The human race has one really effective weapon, and that is laughter.
Ignorance	All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence, and then success is sure.
Imagination	You can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.
India	In India, "cold weather" is merely a conventional phrase and has come into use through the necessity of having some way to distinguish between weather which will melt a brass door-knob and weather which will only make it mushy.
Just helping out	I sat down on their clothes - to keep them from being stolen. - (on seeing native women swimming nude at a beach in Hawaii)
Knowledge	I was gratified to be able to answer promptly. I said I don't know.
Lies	A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.
Life	Whoever has lived long enought to find out what life is, knows how deep a debt of gratitude we owe to Adam, the first great benefactor of our race. He brought death into the world.
Life	When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained.
Literature	Of a novel by Henry James: Once you put it down, you can't pick it up.
Loss	Nothing that grieves us can be called little: by the eternal laws of proportions a child's loss of a doll and a king's loss of a crown are events of the same size.
Majority	Whenever you find that you are on the side of the majority, it is time to reform.
Man	Man is the Only Animal that Blushes. Or needs to.
Martyrdom	Martyrdom covers a multitude of sins.
maturity	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 the old man had learned in seven years.
Misc	It is easier to stay out than get out.
Misc.	Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest.
Misc.	Good breeding consists in concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of the other person.
Money	Virtue had never been as respectable as money.
Newspapers	Advertisements contain the only truths to be relied on in a newspaper.
Parents	My mother had a great deal of trouble with me, but I think she enjoyed it.
Philosophy	It's good sportsmanship to not pick up lost golf balls while they are still rolling.
Procrastination	Never put off until tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow.
Profanity	Under certain circumstances, profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer.
Progress	Soap and education are not as sudden as a massacre, but they are more deadly in the long run.
Reading	The man who doesn't read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them.
Sacred cows	Sacred cows make the best hamburger.
School	In the first place, God made idiots. That was for practice. Then he made school boards.
Science	There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.
Sermons	Few sinners are saved after the first twenty minutes of a sermon.
Speeches	It usually takes more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech.
Spelling	I don't give a damn for a man that can only spell a word one way.
Stupidity	It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.
Taxes	The only difference between a tax man and a taxidermist is the taxidermist leaves the skin.
Truth	When in doubt, tell the truth.
Truth	Truth is more of a stranger than fiction.
Truth	If you tell the truth you don't have to remember anything.
Truth	Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn't.
United States	It was wonderful to find America, but it would have been more wonderful to miss it.
Virtue	Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example.
Wanger	Wagner's music is better than it sounds
Water	Water, taken in moderation, cannot hurt anybody.
Water	Whiskey's for drinking. Water's for fighting over.
Words	The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.
World	Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.

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