Top 500 Mark Twain Quotes (2024 Update)
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351. “When people do not respect us we are sharply offended; yet deep down in his private heart no man much respects himself.”

— Mark Twain

352. “To one in sympathy with nature, each season, in its turn, seems the loveliest.”

— Mark Twain

353. “Public opinion is held in reverence. It settles everything. Some think it is the voice of God.”

— Mark Twain

354. “Honesty: The best of all the lost arts.”

— Mark Twain

355. “One of the brightest gems in the New England weather is the dazzling uncertainty of it.”

— Mark Twain

356. “You can’t reason with your heart; it has its own laws, and thumps about things which the intellect scorns.”

— Mark Twain

357. “Everything human is pathetic. The secret source of humor itself is not joy but sorrow. There is no humor in heaven.”

— Mark Twain

358. “There is nothing in the world like a persuasive speech to fuddle the mental apparatus and upset the convictions and debauch the emotions of an audience not practiced in the tricks and delusions of oratory.”

— Mark Twain

359. “Most people can’t bear to sit in church for an hour on Sundays. How are they supposed to live somewhere very similar to it for eternity?”

— Mark Twain

360. “Use the right word, not its second cousin.”

— Mark Twain

361. “If horses knew their strength we should not ride anymore.”

— Mark Twain

362. “It’s lovely to live on a raft. We had the sky up there, all speckled with stars, and we used to lay on our backs and look up at them, and discuss about whether they was made or only just happened.”

— Mark Twain

363. “An adventure is something that while it’s happening you wish it wasn’t.”

— Mark Twain

364. “What a wee little part of a person’s life are his acts and his words! His real life is led in his head, and is known to none but himself.”

— Mark Twain

365. “A human being has a natural desire to have more of a good thing than he needs.”

— Mark Twain

366. “If Christ were here there is one thing he would not be – a Christian.”

— Mark Twain

367. “When I want to read something nice, I sit down and write it myself.”

— Mark Twain

368. “I never write “metropolis” for seven cents when I can write “city” and get paid the same.”

— Mark Twain

369. “Talent without work is useless, thank God.”

— Mark Twain

370. “We are all alike, on the inside.”

— Mark Twain

371. “Life should begin with age and it’s privileges and accumulations, and end with youth and it’s capacity to splendidly enjoy such advantages.”

— Mark Twain

372. “I smoke in moderation. Only one cigar at a time.”

— Mark Twain

373. “High and fine literature is wine, and mine is only water; but everybody likes water.”

— Mark Twain

374. “Thousands of geniuses live and die undiscovered – either by themselves or by others.”

— Mark Twain

375. “Make your mark in New York and you are a made man.”

— Mark Twain

376. “America cannot have an empire abroad and a Republic at home.”

— Mark Twain

377. “He had the calm confidence of a Christian with four aces.”

— Mark Twain

378. “An American has not seen the United States until he has seen Mardi-Gras in New Orleans.”

— Mark Twain

379. “Let us be thankful for the fools. But for them the rest of us could not succeed.”

— Mark Twain

380. “Nothing that grieves us can be called little: by the eternal laws of proportion a child’s loss of a doll and a king’s loss of a crown are events of the same size.”

— Mark Twain

381. “Be careless in your dress if you will, but keep a tidy soul.”

— Mark Twain

382. “One must travel, to learn. Every day, now, old Scriptural phrases that never possessed any significance for me before, take to themselves a meaning.”

— Mark Twain

383. “Pessimism is only the name that men of weak nerve give to wisdom.”

— Mark Twain

384. “There comes a time in every rightly constructed boy’s life when he has a raging desire to go somewhere and dig for hidden treasure.”

— Mark Twain

385. “Such is professional jealousy; a scientist will never show any kindness for a theory which he did not start himself.”

— Mark Twain

386. “Fame is a vapor, popularity an accident; the only earthly certainty is oblivion.”

— Mark Twain

387. “Memories which someday will become all beautiful when the last annoyance that encumbers them shall have faded out of our minds.”

— Mark Twain

388. “Civilization largely consists in hiding human nature. When the barbarian learns to hide it we account him enlightened.”

— Mark Twain

389. “There are three things men can do with women: love them, suffer them, or turn them into literature.”

— Mark Twain

390. “After all these years, I see that I was mistaken about Eve in the beginning; it is better to live outside the Garden with her than inside it without her.”

— Mark Twain

391. “It is easier to stay out than get out.”

— Mark Twain

392. “I once sent a dozen of my friends a telegram saying ‘flee at once – all is discovered.’ They all left town immediately.”

— Mark Twain

393. “It is not best that we should all think alike; it is a difference of opinion that makes horse races.”

— Mark Twain

394. “If it is a Miracle, any sort of evidence will answer, but if it is a Fact, proof is necessary.”

— Mark Twain

395. “Never refuse to do a kindness unless the act would work great injury to yourself, and never refuse to take a drink – under any circumstances.”

— Mark Twain

396. “What is the chief end of man?-to get rich. In what way?-dishonestly if we can; honestly if we must.”

— Mark Twain

397. “There has been much tragedy in my life; at least half of it actually happened.”

— Mark Twain

398. “The finest clothing made is a person’s own skin, but, of course, society demands something more than this.”

— Mark Twain

399. “There are 869 different forms of lying, but only one of them has been squarely forbidden. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.”

— Mark Twain

400. “So far as I am able to judge, nothing has been left undone, either by man or nature, to make India the most extraordinary country that the sun visits on his rounds. Nothing seems to have been forgotten, nothing overlooked.”

— Mark Twain