Mark Twain Quotes

"Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example."
Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson" (1894)

"A banker is a fellow who lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining, but wants it back the minute it begins to rain."
Mark Twain

"Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest."
Mark Twain

"Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint."
Mark Twain

"Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear - not absence of fear."
Mark Twain

"Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first."
Mark Twain

"In Paris they simply stared when I spoke to them in French; I never did succeed in making those idiots understand their language."
Mark Twain

"It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt."
Mark Twain (attributed)

"The man who doesn't read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them."
Mark Twain

"I was gratified to be able to answer promptly. I said 'I don't know.'"
Mark Twain

"Always tell the truth. That way, you'll never have to remember what you said last time."
Mark Twain

"Whenever you find that you are on the side of the majority, it is time to stop and reconsider."
Mark Twain

"A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes."
Mark Twain (attributed)

"In order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to obtain."
Mark Twain, "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer", Chapter 2

"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education."
Mark Twain

"Somehow, we are always more anxious to be distinguished for a talent which we do not possess, than to be praised for the fifteen which we do possess."
Mark Twain

"It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare."
Mark Twain

"Do something every day that you don't want to do; this is the golden rule for acquiring the habit of doing your duty without pain."
Mark Twain

"Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great."
Mark Twain

"When in doubt, tell the truth."
Mark Twain

"When people do not respect us we are sharply offended; yet deep down in his private heart no man much respects himself."
Mark Twain

"Education: that which reveals to the wise, and conceals from the stupid, the vast limits of their knowledge."
Mark Twain

"[Humanity] has unquestionably one really effective weapon—laughter. Power, money, persuasion, supplication, persecution—these can lift at a colossal humbug—push it a little—weaken it a little, century by century; but only laughter can blow it to rags and atoms at a blast. Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand."
Mark Twain

"There is nothing so annoying as to have two people talking when you're busy interrupting."
Mark Twain

"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

"Whenever the literary German dives into a sentence, that is the last you are going to see of him until he emerges on the other side of his atlantic with his verb in his mouth."
Mark Twain

"Never put off until tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow."
Mark Twain

"The miracle, or the power, that elevates the few is to be found in their industry, application, and perseverance under the prompting of a brave, determined spirit."
Mark Twain

"Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum (I think that I think, therefore I think that I am.)"
Mark Twain (attributed)