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Mark Twain

Mark Twain Quotes

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Famous Mark Twain Quotes

“In the laboratory there are no fustian ranks, no brummagem aristocracies; the domain of Science is a republic, and all its citizens are brothers and equals, its princes of Monaco and its stonemasons of Cromarty meeting, barren of man-made gauds and meretricious decorations, upon the one majestic level!”

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Book:The Devil's Race-Track: Mark Twain's
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“I have been scientifically studying the traits and dispositions of the "lower animals" (so-called,) and contrasting them with the traits and dispositions of man. I find the result profoundly humiliating to me. For it obliges me to renounce my allegiance to the Darwinian theory of the Ascent of Man from the Lower Animals; since it now seems plain to me that that theory ought to be vacated in favor of a new and truer one, this new and truer one to be named the Descent of Man from the Higher Animals.”

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Book:What Is Man? and Other Philosophical Writings
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“Strange a God who mouths Golden Rules and forgiveness, then invented hell; who mouths morals to other people and has none Himself; who frowns upon crimes yet commits them all; who created man without invitation, then tries to shuffle the responsibility for man's acts upon man, instead of honorably placing it where it belongs, upon Himself; and finally with altogether divine obtuseness, invites this poor, abused slave to worship Him!”

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Author:Mark Twain
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“If I were required to guess off-hand, and without collusion with higher minds, what is the bottom cause of the amazing material and intellectual advancement of the last fifty years, I should guess that it was the modern-born and previously non-existent disposition on the part of men to believe that a new idea can have value.”

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Book:MARK TWAIN Ultimate Collection: 370+ Titles in One Volume (Illustrated): The Adventures of Tom Sawyer & Huckleberry Finn, The Prince and the Pauper, The £1,000,000 Bank Note, A Horse’s Tale, Yankee in King Arthur's Court, The Innocents Abroad, Life on the Mississippi…
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“If the bubble reputation can be obtained only at the cannon's mouth, I am willing to go there for it, provided the cannon is empty. If it is loaded my immortal and inflexible purpose is to get over the fence and go home. My invariable practice in war has been to bring out of every fight two-thirds more men than when I went in. This seems to me Napoleonic in its grandeur.”

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Book:Tales, Speeches, Essays, and Sketches
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“Man is the only slave. And he is the only animal who enslaves. He has always been a slave in one form or another, and has always held other slaves in bondage under him in one way or another. In our day, he is always some man's slave for wages, and does that man's work; and this slave has other slaves under him for minor wages, and they do his work. The higher animals are the only ones who exclusively do their own work and provide their own living.”

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Book:What Is Man? and Other Philosophical Writings
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“The spirit of Christianity proclaims the brotherhood of the race and the meaning of that strong word has not been left to guesswork, but made tremendously definite - the Christian must forgive his brother man all crimes he can imagine and commit, and all insults he can conceive and utter - forgive these injuries how many times? - seventy times seven - another way of saying there shall be no limit to this forgiveness. That is the spirit and the law of Christianity.”

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Book:Mark Twain and the three R's: race, religion, revolution--and related matters
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“Word it as softly as you please, the spirit of patriotism is the spirit of the dog and wolf. The moment there is a misunderstanding about a boundary line or a hamper of fish or some other squalid matter, see patriotism rise, and hear him split the universe with is war-whoop. The spirit of patriotism being in its nature jealous and selfish, is just in man's line, it comes natural to him - he can live up to all its requirements to the letter; but the spirit of Christianity is not in its entirety possible to him.”

MenWarMatterMomentsSpiritUniverseNaturalLinesChristianityDogPleaseLettersFishesSelfishBoundariesPatriotismJealousSplitsRequirementsMisunderstandingEntiretyHamperChristian Patriotic
Book:The Complete Works of Mark Twain (Illustrated Edition): Novels, Short Stories, Memoir, Travel Books, Letters, Biography, Articles & Speeches: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer & Huckleberry Finn, Life on the Mississippi, Yankee in King Arthur's Court…
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“As I have said before, I never had any large respect for good spelling. That is my feeling yet. Before the spelling-book came with its arbitrary forms, men unconsciously revealed shades of their characters, and also added enlightening shades of expression to what they wrote by their spelling, and so it is possible that the spelling-book has been a doubtful benevolence to us.”

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Book:The Complete Works of Mark Twain: All 13 Novels, Short Stories, Poetry and Essays
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“India is, the cradle of the human race, the birthplace of human speech, the mother of history, the grandmother of legend, and the great grand mother of tradition. our most valuable and most instructive materials in the history of man are treasured up in India only.”

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Author:Mark Twain
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“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.”

MenHas BeensCountrySeemsAbleLeftSunJudgingIndiaExtraordinaryRoundsForgottenHinduismUndoneOverlookedIndependence DayIndependence Day PatrioticRepublic DayIndia Independence DayIndian Independence DayIndian PatrioticMake In India
Book:The Writings of Mark Twain: Following the equator; a journey around the world
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“Our most valuable and most instructive materials in the history of man are treasured up in India.”

MenMaterialsIndiaIndependenceValuableIndianRepublicHinduismIndependence DayTreasuredIndian CultureIndependence Day PatrioticRepublic DayBirthplaceHappy Independence Day UsaHappy Independence Day IndiaHappy Independence DayIndia Independence DayInspiring Independence DayIndian Independence DayHindu ReligionUs Independence DayIndian PatrioticHindu God
Author:Mark Twain
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“By reading keep in a state of excited igorance, like a blind man in a house afire; flounder around, immensely but unintelligently interested; don't know how I got in and can't find the way out, but I'm having a booming time all to myself.Don't know what a Schelgesetzentwurf is, but I keep as excited over it and as worried about it as if it were my own child. I simply live on the Sch.; it is my daily bread. I wouldn't have the question settled for anything in the world.”

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Author:Mark Twain
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“A man's house burns down. The smoking wreckage represents only a ruined home that was dear through years of use and pleasant associations. By and by, as the days and weeks go on, first he misses this, then that, then the other thing. And when he casts about for it he finds that it was in that house. Always it is an essential - here was but one of its kind. It cannot be replaced. It was in that house. It is irrevocably lost...It will be years before the tale of lost essentials is complete, and not till then can he truly know the magnitude of his disaster.”

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Book:Mark Twain's Own Autobiography: The Chapters from the North American Review
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“I have learned that there lies dormant in the souls of all men a penchant for some particular musical instrument an an unsuspected yearning to play on it, which are bound to wake up an demand attention someday. Therefore you who rail at such that disturb your slumbers with unsuccessful and demoralizing attempts to subjugate a guitar, beware! For sooner or later your own time will come.”

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Author:Mark Twain
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“Geniuses are people who dash off weird, wild, incomprehensible poems with astonishing facility, & then go & get booming drunk & sleep in the gutter. Genius elevates a man to ineffable speres [sic] far above the vulgar world, & fills his soul with a regal contempt for the gross & sordid things of earth. It is probably on account of this that people who have genius do not pay their board, as a general thing.”

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Author:Mark Twain
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“It is agreed, in this country, that if a man can arrange his religion so that it perfectly satisfies his conscience, it is not incumbent on him to care whether the arrangement is satisfactory to anyone else or not.”

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Book:Mark Twain on Common Sense: Timeless Advice and Words of Wisdom from America's Most-Revered Humorist
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