Top 500 Mark Twain Quotes (2024 Update)
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251. “Temper is what gets most of us into trouble. Pride is what keeps us there.”

— Mark Twain

252. “The first half of my life I went to school, the second half of my life I got an education.”

— Mark Twain

253. “It takes your enemy and your friend, working together, to hurt you to the heart: the one to slander you and the other to get the news to you.”

— Mark Twain

254. “Good fathers not only tell us how to live, they show us.”

— Mark Twain

255. “A person with a new idea is a crank until the idea succeeds.”

— Mark Twain

256. “God’s great cosmic joke on the human race was requiring that men and women live together in marriage.”

— Mark Twain

257. “Do something everyday that you don’t want to do.”

— Mark Twain

258. “Nothing exists but you. And you are but a thought.”

— Mark Twain

259. “Nothing spoils a good story like the arrival of an eyewitness.”

— Mark Twain

260. “A pessimist is a well-informed optimist.”

— Mark Twain

261. “I was young and foolish then; now I am old and foolisher.”

— Mark Twain

262. “December is the toughest month of the year. Others are July, January, September, April, November, May, March, June, October, August, and February.”

— Mark Twain

263. “Everything has its limit – iron ore cannot be educated into gold.”

— Mark Twain

264. “We can achieve what we can conceive and believe.”

— Mark Twain

265. “For the majority of us, the past is a regret, the future an experiment.”

— Mark Twain

266. “Always obey your parents – when they are present.”

— Mark Twain

267. “Independence-is loyalty to one’s best self and principles, and this is often disloyalty to the general idols and fetishes.”

— Mark Twain

268. “When the world is made to be idiot-proof, the world will become overpopulated with idiots.”

— Mark Twain

269. “Politicians, old buildings, and prostitutes become respectable with age.”

— Mark Twain

270. “Anyone who can only think of one way to spell a word obviously lacks imagination.”

— Mark Twain

271. “Now and then we had a hope that if we lived and were good, God would permit us to be pirates.”

— Mark Twain

272. “Irreverence is the champion of liberty and its only sure defense.”

— Mark Twain

273. “It is a worthy thing to fight for one’s freedom; it is another sight finer to fight for another man’s.”

— Mark Twain

274. “The future interests me – I’m going to spend the rest of my life there.”

— Mark Twain

275. “Let us consider that we are all insane. It will explain us to each other. It will unriddle many riddles.”

— Mark Twain

276. “Thunder is good, thunder is impressive; but it is lightning that does the work.”

— Mark Twain

277. “The dog is a gentleman; I hope to go to his heaven not man’s.”

— Mark Twain

278. “A little starvation can really do more for the average sick man than can the best medicines and the best doctors.”

— Mark Twain

279. “Work is a necessary evil to be avoided.”

— Mark Twain

280. “The writing begins when you’ve finished. Only then do you know what you’re trying to say.”

— Mark Twain

281. “If you don’t like the weather in New England now, just wait a few minutes.”

— Mark Twain

282. “The Mississippi River will always have its own way; no engineering skill can persuade it to do otherwise...”

— Mark Twain

283. “I am quite sure now that often, very often, in matters concerning religion and politics a man’s reasoning powers are not above the monkey’s.”

— Mark Twain

284. “A thing long expected takes the form of the unexpected when at last it comes.”

— Mark Twain

285. “I like criticism, but it must be my way.”

— Mark Twain

286. “If work were so pleasant, the rich would keep it for themselves.”

— Mark Twain

287. “To be good is noble; but to show others how to be good is nobler and no trouble.”

— Mark Twain

288. “I am only human, although I regret it.”

— Mark Twain

289. “A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.”

— Mark Twain

290. “Why is it that we rejoice at a birth and grieve at a funeral? It is because we are not the person involved.”

— Mark Twain

291. “It is noble to teach oneself; it is still nobler to teach others.”

— Mark Twain

292. “Never be haughty to the humble, never be humble to the haughty.”

— Mark Twain

293. “Optimist: Person who travels on nothing from nowhere to happiness.”

— Mark Twain

294. “Let us make a special effort to stop communicating with each other, so we can have some conversation.”

— Mark Twain

295. “I don’t give a damn for a man that can only spell a word one way.”

— Mark Twain

296. “The trouble with the world is not that people know too little; it’s that they know so many things that just aren’t so.”

— Mark Twain

297. “Life is but a dream, a grotesque and foolish dream.”

— Mark Twain

298. “I am an anti-imperialist. I am opposed to having the eagle put its talons on any other land.”

— Mark Twain

299. “The universal brotherhood of man is our most precious possession.”

— Mark Twain

300. “A journalist is a reporter out of a job.”

— Mark Twain