Top 500 Mark Twain Quotes (2023 Update)

1. “The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.”

— Mark Twain

Featured in: Inspirational Quotes, Graduation Quotes

2. “The secret to getting ahead is getting started.”

— Mark Twain

Featured in: Inspirational Entrepreneurship Quotes, Quotes About Writing

3. “Never argue with stupid people, they will drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience.”

— Mark Twain

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4. “Worrying is like paying a debt you don't owe.”

— Mark Twain

5. “The man who does not read has no advantage over the man who cannot read.”

— Mark Twain

6. “If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.”

— Mark Twain

Featured in: Integrity Quotes, Clever Quotes

7. “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

8. “Everyone is a moon, and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody.”

— Mark Twain

9. “Never allow someone to be your priority while allowing yourself to be their option.”

— Mark Twain

10. “Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.”

— Mark Twain

Featured in: Startup Quotes, Change Quotes

11. “Kindness is a language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see.”

— Mark Twain

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12. “Reality can be beaten with enough imagination.”

— Mark Twain

13. “The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.”

— Mark Twain

14. “Sanity and happiness are an impossible combination.”

— Mark Twain

Featured in: Happiness Quotes

15. “Write what you know.”

— Mark Twain

16. “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

Featured in: Bullying Quotes

17. “If voting made any difference they wouldn’t let us do it.”

— Mark Twain

18. “To get the full value of joy you must have someone to divide it with.”

— Mark Twain

19. “Go to heaven for the climate and hell for the company.”

— Mark Twain

20. “Never tell the truth to people who are not worthy of it.”

— Mark Twain

21. “If you don't read the newspaper, you're uninformed. If you read the newspaper, you're mis-informed.”

— Mark Twain

22. “Continuous improvement is better than delayed perfection.”

— Mark Twain

Featured in: Perfection Quotes

23. “I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.”

— Mark Twain

24. “Don’t go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.”

— Mark Twain

Featured in: Attitude Quotes, Graduation Quotes

25. “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.”

— Mark Twain

Featured in: Travel Quotes, Carpe Diem Quotes

26. “I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.”

— Mark Twain

27. “Books are for people who wish they were somewhere else.”

— Mark Twain

28. “A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.”

— Mark Twain

29. “You can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.”

— Mark Twain

30. “Good friends, good books, and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.”

— Mark Twain

31. “Name the greatest of all inventors. Accident.”

— Mark Twain

32. “Life is short, break the rules, forgive quickly, kiss slowly, love truly, laugh uncontrollably, and never regret anything that made you smile.”

— Mark Twain

33. “It is better to deserve honors and not have them than to have them and not deserve them.”

— Mark Twain

34. “A clear conscience is the sure sign of a bad memory.”

— Mark Twain

35. “I've lived through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened.”

— Mark Twain

36. “Explore. Dream. Discover.”

— Mark Twain

Featured in: Quotes About Dreams

37. “Education: the path from cocky ignorance to miserable uncertainty.”

— Mark Twain

38. “If it’s your job to eat a frog, it’s best to do it first thing in the morning. And If it’s your job to eat two frogs, it’s best to eat the biggest one first.”

— Mark Twain

Featured in: Good Morning Quotes

39. “When you fish for love, bait with your heart, not your brain.”

— Mark Twain

40. “A banker is a fellow who lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining, but wants it back the minute it begins to rain.”

— Mark Twain

41. “God created war so that Americans would learn geography.”

— Mark Twain

42. “Loyalty to country always. Loyalty to government, when it deserves it.”

— Mark Twain

43. “It’s easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.”

— Mark Twain

44. “Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear.”

— Mark Twain

Featured in: Courage Quotes

45. “Write without pay until somebody offers to pay.”

— Mark Twain

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

— Mark Twain

47. “I have found out that there ain't no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than to travel with them.”

— Mark Twain

Featured in: Travel Quotes, Adventure Quotes, Hate Quotes

48. “Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please.”

— Mark Twain

49. “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.”

— Mark Twain

Featured in: Quotes About Books And Reading

50. “Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint.”

— Mark Twain

Featured in: Health Quotes, Sarcastic Quotes, Fitness Quotes