Mark Twain Quotes
Samuel Langhorne Clemens, known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American writer, humorist, essayist, entrepreneur, publisher, and lecturer, born on November 30, 1835, and often referred to as the "greatest humorist the United States has produced" and "the father of American literature" by William Faulkner. His celebrated works include "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer," its sequel "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn," often called the "Great American Novel," "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court," "Pudd'nhead Wilson," and "The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today," co-written with Charles Dudley Warner. Raised in Hannibal, Missouri, which inspired the settings for Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, Twain started his career with an apprenticeship in printing and typesetting, contributing to his brother's newspaper. He then became a Mississippi Riverboat pilot, providing material for "Life on the Mississippi." After a humorous stint in mining in Nevada, he turned to journalism, working for the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise, crafting a literary style marked by humor, social commentary, and sharp observation of American life and culture.
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74 Quotes Found
Life would be infinitely happier if we could only be born at the age of eighty and gradually approach eighteen.
Mark Twain
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.
Mark Twain
When a person cannot deceive himself the chances are against his being able to deceive other people.
Mark Twain
A man's character may be learned from the adjectives which he habitually uses in conversation.
Mark Twain
It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare.
Mark Twain
The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.
Mark Twain
I have never taken any exercise, except sleeping and resting, and I never intend to take any.
Mark Twain
It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them.
Mark Twain
Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it.
Mark Twain
There are people who can do all fine and heroic things but one - keep from telling their happiness to the unhappy.
Mark Twain
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.
Mark Twain
Lord save us all from old age and broken health and a hope tree that has lost the faculty of putting out blossoms.
Mark Twain
Everything human is pathetic. The secret source of humor itself is not joy but sorrow. There is no humor in heaven.
Mark Twain
Humor must not professedly teach and it must not professedly preach, but it must do both if it would live forever.
Mark Twain
I must have a prodigious quantity of mind; it takes me as much as a week sometimes to make it up.
Mark Twain
Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.
Mark Twain
Patriot: the person who can holler the loudest without knowing what he is hollering about.
Mark Twain
Suppose you were an idiot, and suppose you were a member of Congress; but I repeat myself.
Mark Twain
When people do not respect us we are sharply offended; yet in his private heart no man much respects himself.
Mark Twain
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't.
Mark Twain
Only one thing is impossible for God: To find any sense in any copyright law on the planet.
Mark Twain
The Christian's Bible is a drug store. Its contents remain the same, but the medical practice changes.
Mark Twain