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Mark Twain

Mark Twain Quotes

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Famous Mark Twain Quotes

“Man has been here 32,000 years. That it took a hundred million years to prepare the world for him is proof that that is what it was done for. I suppose it is, I dunno. If The Eiffel Tower were now to represent the world's age, the skin of paint on the pinnacle knob at its summit would represent man's share of that age; and anybody would perceive that the skin was what the tower was built for. I reckon they would, I dunno.”

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Book:Mark Twain’s Book of Animals
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“New Year's is a harmless annual institution, of no particular use to anybody save as a scapegoat for promiscuous drunks, and friendly calls and humbug resolutions.”

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Book:Early Tales & Sketches, Vol. 1: 1851-1864
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“When I was fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have him around. When I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years. See what happens when you "know it all", at any stage of life? Farther down the track you may see clearly how certain personal opinions, held onto too tightly, could be fogging up the view, and providing incorrect insight. Prosperity is the best protector of principle.”

KnowsYearsMayHappensCertainFatherViewsOpinionPrinciplesStageInspirational LifeTwentiesSevenTrackProsperityInsightIgnorantProvidingSeven YearsTwenty OneFourteenProtectorKnow It AllStages Of LifePersonal Opinions
Author:Mark Twain
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“That is the way of the scientist. He will spend thirty years in building up a mountain range of facts with the intent to prove a certain theory; then he is so happy with his achievement that as a rule he overlooks the main chief fact of all-that all his accumulation proves an entirely different thing.”

WayYearsDifferentFactsScienceCertainBuildingTheoryMountainProveAchievementScientistChiefsRangeThirtyDifferent ThingsAccumulationThirty YearsBuilding UpMountain Ranges
Book:Mark Twain's Essays: Top Essays
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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!”

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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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“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.”

IfsMenLifeInspirationalShouldYearsMindBelieveIdeasHandsInspirationMotivationalLastsMotivationValuesCausesBornModernMaterialsHigherIntellectualOptimismBottomFiftyNew IdeasDispositionAdvancementCollusion
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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“I have no liking for novels or stories - none in the world; and so, whenever I read one - which is not oftener than once in two years, and even in these same cases I seldom read beyond the middle of the book - my distaste for the vehicle always taints my judgment of the literature itself, as a matter of course; and also of course makes my verdict valuless. Are you saying "You have written stories yourself." Quite true: but the fact that an Indian likes to scalp people is no evidence that he likes to be scalped.”

PeopleWorldYearsTwoBookMatterFactsStoriesCoursesReadingLiteratureCasesNovelWrittenMiddleJudgmentEvidenceLikesIndianTwo YearsVehicleVerdictDistaste
Book:The Wit and Wisdom of Mark Twain
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“I will now claim - until dispossesed - that I was the first person in the world to apply the typewriter to literature. ... The early machine was full of caprices, full of defects- devilish ones. It had as many immoralities as the machine of today has virtues. After a year or two I found that it was degrading my character, so I thought I would give it to Howells. ... He took it home to Boston, and my morals began to improve, but his have never recovered.”

WorldGivingYearsFirstsPersonsTwoCharacterHomeTodayFoundLiteratureMoralVirtueMachinesClaimsDefectsBostonFirst PersonTypewritersImmoralityDegradingCapriceDevilish
Author:Mark Twain
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“My philological studies have satisfied me that a gifted person ought to learn English (barring spelling and pronouncing) in thirty hours, French in thirty days, and German in thirty years. It seems manifest, then, that the latter tongue ought to be trimmed down and repaired. If it is to remain as it is, it ought to be gently and reverently set aside among the dead languages, for only the dead have time to learn it.”

IfsYearsPersonsSeemsLanguageHoursStudyOughtDown AndTongueSatisfiedAwfulThirtyLatterManifestGiftedThirty YearsSpellingGerman Language
Book:A Tramp Abroad
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“It is not like studying German, where you mull along, in a groping, uncertain way, for thirty years; and at last, just as you think you've got it, they spring the subjunctive on you, and there you are. No- and I see now plainly enough, that the great pity about the German language is, that you can't fall off it and hurt yourself. There is nothing like that feature to make you attend strictly to business.”

ThinkingWayYearsEnoughLastsFallLanguageHurtStudySpringPityAwfulFeaturesThirtyUncertainBikeThirty YearsGerman Language
Book:The Complete Works of Mark Twain: All 13 Novels, Short Stories, Poetry and Essays
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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.”

KnowsMenLoveYearsFirstsKindUseHomeHouseLostWeekMissingGoes OnEssentialsDearCastsDisasterTalesPleasantSmokingGoodbyeAssociationReplacedRuinedSaying GoodbyeMagnitudeThrough The YearsWreckage
Book:Mark Twain's Own Autobiography: The Chapters from the North American Review
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“This morning arrives a letter from my ancient silver-mining comrade, Calvin H. Higbie, a man whom I have not seen nor had communication with for forty-four years. . . . [Footnote: Roughing It is dedicated to Higbie.] . . . I shall allow myself the privilege of copying his punctuation and his spelling, for to me they are a part of the man. He is as honest as the day is long. He is utterly simple-minded and straightforward, and his spelling and his punctuation are as simple and honest as he is himself. He makes no apology for them, and no apology is needed.”

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Author:Mark Twain
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“In our day we don't allow a hundred and thirty years to elapse between glimpses of a marvel. If somebody should discover a creek in the county next to the one that the North Pole is in, Europe and America would start fifteen costly expeditions thither; one to explore the creek, and the other fourteen to hunt for each other.”

IfsShouldYearsAmericaNextHundredDiscoveryEuropeThirtyFifteenGlimpseHuntsCountyThirty YearsFourteenExpeditionsCreeksNorth PoleEurope And America
Book:Life On The Mississippi: Mark Twain's Collections
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“Annihilation has no terrors for me, because I have already tried it before I was born -a hundred million years -and I have suffered more in an hour, in this life, than I remember to have suffered in the whole hundred million years put together. There was a peace, a serenity, an absence of all sense of responsibility, an absence of worry, an absence of care, grief, perplexity; and the presence of a deep content and unbroken satisfaction in that hundred million years of holiday which I look back upon with a tender longing and with a grateful desire to resume, when the opportunity comes.”

YearsLooksWholeCareTogetherRememberDeathDesireOpportunityBornHoursGriefResponsibilityMillionsWorryHundredGratefulLongingTerrorSatisfactionAbsenceThis LifeHolidaySerenityResumesAnnihilationUnbrokenSense Of ResponsibilityPerplexity
Author:Mark Twain
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“In the space of one hundred and seventy-six years the Mississippi has shortened itself two hundred and forty-two miles. Therefore, in the Old Silurian Period the Mississippi River was upward of one million three hundred thousand miles long, seven hundred and forty-two years from now the Mississippi will be only a mile and three-quarters long. There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesome returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.”

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Author:Mark Twain
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“Beautiful credit! The foundation of modern society. Who shall say that this is not the golden age of mutual trust, of unlimited reliance upon human promises? That is a peculiar condition of society which enables a whole nation to instantly recognize point and meaning in the familiar newspaper anecdote, which puts into the mouth of a distinguished speculator in lands and mines this remark: -- I wasn't worth a cent two years ago, and now I owe two millions of dollars.”

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Book:The Complete Novels of Mark Twain (Illustrated): 12 American Classics & Author’s Biography: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer & Huckleberry Finn, A Horse’s Tale, The Prince and the Pauper, The American Claimant, The Mysterious Stranger…
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“The law of God, as quite plainly expressed in woman's construction is this: There shall be no limit put upon your intercourse with the other sex sexually, at any time of life. The law of God, as quite plainly expressed in man's construction is this: During your entire life you shall be under inflexible limits and restrictions, sexually. During twenty-three days in every month (in absence of pregnancy) from the time a woman is seven years old till she dies of old age, she is ready for action, and competent. As competent as the candlestick is to receive the candle. Competent every day, competent every night. Also she wants that candle - yearns for it, longs for it, hankers after it, as commanded by the law of God in her heart.”

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Author:Mark Twain
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