Famous Mark Twain Quotes: These Mark Twain quotes will inspire you to think, learn, love, and live life to the fullest—and make you laugh. Mark Twain was a prominent figure in American literature who left a lasting impact on his writing. His wit, satire and social commentary continue to be widely recognized and appreciated. He remains an important figure in American history and his works continue to be widely read and studied today. Mark Twain was a famous American writer and humorist, born in 1835 and died in 1910. He is best known for his novels “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” and “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.” Twain’s writing is known for its wit, satire, and social commentary. He is considered one of the greatest American writers of all time.
Famous Mark Twain Quotes
#1. “Wisdom is the reward you get for a lifetime of listening when you would rather have talked.” ~ Mark Twain
#2. “To succeed in life, you need two things: ignorance and confidence.” ~ Mark Twain
#3. “To get the full value of joy you must have someone to divide it with.” ~ Mark Twain
#4. “I couldn’t bear to think about it; and yet, somehow, I couldn’t think about nothing else.” ~ Mark Twain
#5. “A half-truth is the most cowardly of lies.” ~ Mark Twain
#6. “The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.” ~ Mark Twain
#7. ″… a woman will never do again what has been done before.” ~ Mark Twain
#8. “I wasn’t worth a cent two years ago, and now I owe two millions of dollars.” ~ Mark Twain
#9. “Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please.” ~ Mark Twain
#10. “Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.” ~ Mark Twain
#11. “It’s the little things that smooth people’s roads the most.” ~ Mark Twain
#12. “Tom was a glittering hero once more-the pet of the old, the envy of the young. His name even went into immortal print, for the village paper magnified him. There were some that believed he would be President, yet, if he escaped hanging.” ~ Mark Twain
#13. “And when he awoke in the morning and looked upon the wretchedness about him, his dream had had its usual effect: it had intensified the sordidness of his surroundings a thousandfold.” ~ Mark Twain
#14. “Don’t part with your illusions. When they are gone you may still exist, but you have ceased to live.” ~ Mark Twain
#15. “Out of all the things I have lost, I miss my mind the most” ~ Mark Twain
#16. “It gave an appalling idea of the value of an hour, and I thought I could never waste one again without remorse and terror.” ~ Mark Twain
#17. “It may be history, it may be only a legend, a tradition. It may have happened, it may not have happened: but it could have happened. It may be that the wise and the learned believed it in the old days; it maybe that only the unlearned and the simple loved it and credited it.” ~ Mark Twain
#18. “Principles have no real force except when one is well-fed.” ~ Mark Twain
#19. “That which I have seen, in that little moment, will never go out from my memory, but will abide there; and I shall see it all the days, and dream of it all the nights, till I die. Would God I had been blind!” ~ Mark Twain
#20. “The source of all humor is not laughter, but sorrow.” ~ Mark Twain
#21. “Foo-foo the First, King of the Mooncalves!” ~ Mark Twain
#22. “Yes, King Edward VI lived only a few years, poor boy, but he lived them worthily.” ~ Mark Twain
#23. “All kings are mostly rapscallions, as far as I can make out.” ~ Mark Twain
#24. “I can teach anybody how to get what they want out of life. The problem is that I can’t find anybody who can tell me what they want.” ~ Mark Twain
#25. “In the ancient city of London, on a certain autumn day in the second quarter of the sixteenth century, a boy was born to a poor family of the name of Canty, who did not want him. On the same day another English child was born to a rich family of the name of Tudor, who did want him.” ~ Mark Twain
#26. “Never argue with stupid people, they will drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience.” ~ Mark Twain
#27. “Loyalty to a petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul.” ~ Mark Twain
#28. “If you don’t read the newspaper, you’re uninformed. If you read the newspaper, you’re mis-informed.” ~ Mark Twain
#29. “I ain’t doing my duty by that boy, and that’s the Lord’s truth, goodness knows. Spare the rod and spile the child, as the Good Book says. I’m a-laying up sin and suffering for us both, I know. He’s full of the Old Scratch, but laws-a-me! he’s my own dead sister’s boy, poor thing, and I ain’t got the heart to lash him, somehow. Every time I let him off, my conscience does hurt me so, and every time I hit him my old heart most breaks.” ~ Mark Twain
#30. “He was sunshine most always-I mean he made it seem like good weather.” ~ Mark Twain
#31. “When I am king they shall not have bread and shelter only, but also teachings out of books, for a full belly is little worth where the mind is starved.” ~ Mark Twain
#32. “Unless you can get the ear of a Senator, or a Congressman, or a Chief of a Bureau or Department, and persuade him to use his ‘influence’ in your behalf, you cannot get an employment of the most trivial nature in Washington.” ~ Mark Twain
#33. “Foreordain it? No. The man’s circumstances and environment order it. His first act determines the second and all that follow after.” ~ Mark Twain
#34. “Often, the less there is to justify a traditional custom, the harder it is to get rid of it.” ~ Mark Twain
#35. “Many men pray, not many of them like to do it. A few pray long, the others make a short cut.” ~ Mark Twain
#36. “Now were he impostor and called himself prince, look you that would be natural; that would be reasonable. But lived ever an impostor yet, who, being called prince by the king, prince by the court, prince by all, denied his dignity and pleaded against his exaltation? No! By the soul of St. Swithin, no! This is the true prince, gone mad.” ~ Mark Twain
#37. “Do the thing you fear most and the death of fear is certain.” ~ Mark Twain
#38. “I am not in the humor for it.” ~ Mark Twain
#39. “Among you boys you have a game: you stand a row of bricks on end a few inches apart; you push a brick, it knocks its neighbor over, the neighbor knocks over the next brick–and so on till all the row is prostrate. That is human life.” ~ Mark Twain
#40. “Yet little Tom was not unhappy. He had a hard time of it but did not know it. It was the sort of time that all the Offal Court boys had, therefore he supposed it was the correct and comfortable thing.” ~ Mark Twain
#41. “The most interesting information comes from children, for they tell all they know and then stop.” ~ Mark Twain
#42. “You only just tell a boy you won’t ever have anybody but him, ever ever ever, and then you kiss and that’s all. Anybody can do it.” ~ Mark Twain
#43. “Life is short, break the rules. Forgive quickly, kiss slowly. Love truly. Laugh uncontrollably and never regret anything that makes you smile.” ~ Mark Twain
#44. “It does us all good to unbend sometimes.” ~ Mark Twain
#45. ″… no country can be well governed unless its citizens as a body keep religiously before their minds that they are the guardians of the law and that the law officers are only the machinery for its execution, nothing more.” ~ Mark Twain
#46. “Learning softeneth the heart and breedeth gentleness and charity.” ~ Mark Twain
#47. “Say, Becky, was you ever engaged?” “What’s that?” “Why, engaged to be married.” “No.” “Would you like to?” “I reckon so. I don’t know. What is it like?” “Like? Why it ain’t like anything. You only just tell a boy you won’t ever have anybody but him, ever ever ever, and then you kiss and that’s all. Anybody can do it.” ~ Mark Twain
#48. “It is wiser to find out than suppose.” ~ Mark Twain
#49. “Life was not a valuable gift, but death was. […] Death was man’s best friend; when man could endure life no longer, death came and set him free.” ~ Mark Twain
#50. “The world is made wrong; kings should go to school to their own laws, at times, and so learn mercy.” ~ Mark Twain
#51. “When you fish for love, bait with your heart, not your brain.” ~ Mark Twain
#52. “All right then, I’ll go to hell” ~ Mark Twain
#53. “As you perceive, the only person responsible for the couple’s offense escaped; and not only escaped but became the executioner of the innocent.” ~ Mark Twain
#54. “Human history in all ages is red with blood, and bitter with hate, and stained with cruelties; but not since Biblical times have these features been without a limit of some kind. ~ Mark Twain
#55. “Don’t wait. The time will never be just right.” ~ Mark Twain
#56. “You know that kind of quiver that trembles around through you when you are seeing something so strange and enchanting and wonderful that it is just a fearful joy to be alive and look at it.” ~ Mark Twain
#57. “I was seldom able to see an opportunity until it had ceased to be one.” ~ Mark Twain
#58. “The trouble is not in dying for a friend, but in finding a friend worth dying for.” ~ Mark Twain
#59. “Oh, they just have a bully time – take ships, and burn them, and get the money and bury it in awful places in their island where there’s ghosts and things to watch, it, and kill everybody in the ships – make ‘em walk a plank. they don’t kill the women – they’re too noble. And the women’s always beautiful, too.” ~ Mark Twain
#60. “Give every day the chance to become the most beautiful of your life.” ~ Mark Twain
#61. “Do the right thing. It will gratify some people and astonish the rest.” ~ Mark Twain
#62. “The lack of money is the root of all evil.” ~ Mark Twain
#63. “There was no getting around the stubborn fact that taking sweetmeats was only “hooking,” while taking bacon and hams and such valuables was plain simple stealing — and there was a command against that in the Bible. So they inwardly resolved that so long as they remained in the business, their piracies should not again be sullied with the crime of stealing.” ~ Mark Twain
#64. “When angry, count to four; when very angry, swear.” ~ Mark Twain
#65. “Human beings can be awful cruel to one another.” ~ Mark Twain
#66. “Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear – not absence of fear.” ~ Mark Twain
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