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Mark Twain

Mark Twain Quotes

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Famous Mark Twain Quotes

“Two things seemed pretty apparent to me. One was that in order to be a pilot a man had to learn more than any one man ought to learn; and the other was that he must learn it all over again in a different way every 24 hours.”

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Book:Life on the Mississippi (Volume 1 of 3 ) (EasyRead Super Large 24pt Edition)
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“The election makes me think of a story of a man who was dying. He had only two minutes to live, so he sent for a clergyman and asked him, "Where is the best place to go to?" He was undecided about it. So the minister told him that each place had its advantages--heaven for climate, and hell for society.”

ThinkingMenTwoStoriesChoicesPoliticsHeavenHellMinutesDyingAdvantageElectionClimateMinistersBest PlacePlaces To GoClergymenUndecided
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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“The Bible is full of interest. It has noble poetry in it; and some clever fables; and some blood-drenched history; and some good morals; and a wealth of obscenity; and upwards of a thousand lies. This Bible is built mainly out of fragments of older Bibles that had their day and crumbled to ruin. So it noticeably lacks in originality, necessarily. Its three or four most imposing and impressive events all happened in earlier Bibles; there are only two new things in it: hell, for one, and that singular heaven I have told you about.”

TwoLyingThreeHeavenInterestWealthMoralHellFourHappenedBloodEventsThousandBuiltNobleCleverRuinsOriginalityNew ThingsFragmentsImpressiveFablesImposingObscenityGood Moral
Author:Mark Twain
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“Water is an individual, an animal, and is alive, remove the hydrogen and it is an animal and is alive; the remaining oxygen is also an individual, an animal, and is alive. Recapitulation: the two individuals combined, constitute a third individual-and yet each continues to be an individual....here was mute Nature explaining the sublime mystery of the Trinity so luminously that even the commonest understanding could comprehend it, whereas many a trained master of words had labored to do it with speech and failed.”

TwoIndividualUnderstandingWaterAnimalAliveMysteryMastersSpeechThirdsRemoveSublimeOxygenExplainingMuteTrinityHydrogenRecapitulation
Author:Mark Twain
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“Compliments make me vain: & when I am vain, I am insolent & overbearing. It is a pity, too, because I love compliments. I love them even when they are not so. My child, I can live on a good compliment two weeks with nothing else to eat.”

ChildrenI CanTwoWeekPityVainMy ChildrenComplimentTwo WeeksInsolentOverbearing
Book:Mark Twain's Aquarium: The Samuel Clemens-Angelfish Correspondence, 1905-1910
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“A man who is not born with the novel-writing gift has a troublesome time of it when he tries to build a novel. I know this from experience. He has no clear idea of his story; in fact he has no story. He merely has some people in his mind, and an incident or two, also a locality, and he trusts he can plunge those people into those incidents with interesting results.”

PeopleKnowsMenWritingTryingMindTwoIdeasFactsStoriesBornInterestingResultsNovelClearIncidentsPlungeNovel WritingTroublesomeLocality
Book:The Complete Works of Mark Twain: All 13 Novels, Short Stories, Poetry and Essays
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“There are no witches. The witch text remains; only the practice has changed. Hell fire is gone, but the text remains. Infant damnation is gone, but the text remains. More than two hundred death penalties are gone from the law books, but the texts that authorized them remain.”

TwoBookLawPracticeGoneHellFireChangedHundredRemainsWitchPenaltiesInfantDeath PenaltyDamnationHell FireLaw Books
Book:Mark Twain at Your Fingertips: A Book of Quotations
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“Does the human being reason? No; he thinks, muses, reflects, but does not reason...that is, in the two things which are the peculiar domain of the heart, not the mind, politics and religion. He doesn't want to know the other side. He wants arguments and statistics for his own side, and nothing more.”

ThinkingKnowsWantMindHumansHeartDoeTwoReasonSidesHuman BeingsArgumentReasoningTwo ThingsStatisticsPeculiarMuseDomainReflectingReligion And Politics
Author:Mark Twain
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“The observance of Thanksgiving Day-as a function-has become general of late years. The Thankfulness is not so general. This is natural. Two-thirds of the nation have always had hard luck and a hard time during the year, and this has a calming effect upon their enthusiasm.”

YearsTwoHardNationsNaturalEffectsLateThirdsFunctionLuckEnthusiasmHard TimesThanksgivingDayThankfulnessBeing ThankfulCalmingThanksgiving DayObservanceCalming Effect
Book:Following the Equator:
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“A mighty porterhouse steak an inch and a half thick, hot and sputtering from the griddle; dusted with fragrant pepper; enriched with little melting bits of butter of the most impeachable freshness and genuineness; the precious juices of the meat trickling out and joining the gravy, archipelagoed with mushrooms; a township or two of tender, yellowish fat gracing an out-lying district of this ample county of beefsteak; the long white bone which divides the sirloin from the tenderloin still in its place.”

LittlesLongStillsTwoLyingBitsWhiteHalfHotBonesFatsMeatDividesThickInchesJuiceMeltingJoiningCountySteakMushroomsFreshnessPeppersGravyGenuineness
Author:Mark Twain
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“The Germans have an inhuman way of cutting up their verbs. Now a verb has a hard time enough of it in this world when it's all together. It's downright inhuman to split it up. But that's just what those Germans do. They take part of a verb and put it down here, like a stake, and they take the other part of it and put it away over yonder like another stake, and between these two limits they just shovel in German. from "Disappearance of Literature”

WorldWayTwoHardEnoughTogetherLiteratureCuttingThis WorldLimitsHard TimesStakesSplitsVerbsInhumanDisappearanceShovels
Book:Delphi Complete Works of Mark Twain (Illustrated)
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“I came in with Halley's Comet in 1835. It is coming again next year, and I expect to go out with it. It will be the greatest disappointment of my life if I don't go out with Halley's Comet. The Almighty has said, no doubt: "Now here are these two unaccountable freaks; they came in together, they must go out together.”

IfsYearsSaidTwoTogetherNextDoubtDisappointmentNo DoubtFreakAlmightyNext YearCometsHalley's Comet
Book:Mark Twain at Your Fingertips: A Book of Quotations
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“There warn't anybody at the church, except maybe a hog or two, for there warn't any lock on the door, and hogs likes a puncheon floor in summer-time because it's cool. If you notice, most folks don't go to church only when they've got to; but a hog is different.”

IfsTwoDifferentChurchDoorsSummerFolksLikesLocksHogHuckleberrySummer Time
Book:Mark Twain's Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn: The Original Text Edition
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“Solomon, who was one of the Deity's favorites, had a copulation cabinet composed of seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines. To save his life he could not have kept two of these young creatures satisfactorily refreshed, even if he had fifteen experts to help him. Necessarily almost the entire thousand had to go hungry for years and years on a stretch. Conceive of a man hardhearted enough to look daily upon all that suffering and not be moved to mitigate it.”

IfsMenYearsLooksTwoEnoughHelpingYoungSufferingThreeWifeViolenceThousandCreaturesHundredMovedSevenHungerSatisfactionHungryCrueltyExpertsFifteenDeitiesCabinetsViolence Against WomenPolygamyInhumanitySolomonRefreshmentsHaremConcubinesHeartlessness
Book:Letters from the Earth: Easyread Edition
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“The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.”

LifeInspirationalTwoImportantWisdomMotivationalSuccessMotivationPeaceBornInspiringPositiveWise WordsBirthWords Of WisdomEntrepreneurWork OutEducationalMeaning Of LifeChanging The WorldRealisingSuccessful PeopleGraduationBad AssPublishersRevealingPositive LifeRealisedInsperationalBeing PositiveDoing YouSuccessful BusinessHumoristsMotivational SuccessBest SuccessStarting A BusinessMost Important Things In LifeEqualizerRare ThingsThink Positive Be PositiveKnowing NothingYour Purpose In LifeWork You LoveWorld LifeWork LoveLive With PurposeWonderful DayGreat InspirationalWorld And LifeEncouraging LifeBirth LifeImportant Things In Your LifeImportant DaysImportant LifeConfident In YourselfLife Going OnAwesome MotivationalLaunching A BusinessInspirational Motivational Images
Author:Mark Twain
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“All schools, all colleges, have two great functions: to confer, and to conceal, valuable knowledge. The theological knowledge which they conceal cannot justly be regarded as less valuable than that which they reveal. That is, when a man is buying a basket of strawberries it can profit him to know that the bottom half of it is rotten.”

KnowsMenTwoSchoolReligiousHalfKnowledgeCollegeFunctionBottomProfitEducationalValuableBuyingRottenTheologicalBasketsStrawberries
Book:Mark Twain at Your Fingertips: A Book of Quotations
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“The proverb says, "Born lucky, always lucky," and I am very superstitious. As a small boy I was notoriously lucky. It was usual for one or two of our lads (per annum) to get drowned in the Mississippi or in Bear Creek, but I was pulled out in a 2/3 drowned condition 9 times before I learned to swim, and was considered to be a cat in disguise.”

TwoFunnyBornBoysConditionsBearsLuckyHumorousCatLuckEntrepreneurSwimSwimmingUsualDisguiseConsideringPullingPublishersDrowningMississippiSuperstitiousLadLecturerHumoristsCreeks
Book:Mark Twain’s Letters & Speeches (Annotated Edition)
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“Very well, then, where do we arrive? Where do we arrive with our respect, our homage, our filial affection? At Adam! At Adam, every time. We can't build a monument to a germ, but we can build one to Adam, who is in the way to turn myth in in fifty years and be entirely forgotten in two hundred. We can build a monument and save his name to the world forever, and we'll do it!”

WorldWayYearsWellsTwoTurnsNamesForeverEvolutionHundredForgottenAffectionMythFiftyAdamMonumentGermsHomageFilial
Author:Mark Twain
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“We could use up two Eternities in learning all that is to be learned about our own world and the thousands of nations that have arisen and flourished and vanished from it. Mathematics alone would occupy me eight million years.”

WorldYearsTwoUseScienceNationsMillionsEternityMathematicsCuriosityEightMathMathematicalMath And ScienceMathematics And ScienceNumbers And MathLearning MathMath Teacher
Book:Delphi Complete Works of Mark Twain (Illustrated)
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