Mark Twain Quotes

Mark Twain (November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910) was an American author, novelist and humorist. He is most noted for his novels, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876), and its sequel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885),[2] the latter often called "the Great American Novel. Mark Twain was born during a visit by Halley's Comet, and he predicted that he would "go out with it" as well. He died the day following the comet's subsequent return. He was lauded as the "greatest American humorist of his age," and William Faulkner called Twain 'the father of American literature'."

1. Humor is the great thing, the saving thing. The minute it crops up, all our hardnesses yield, all our irritations and resentments flit away and a sunny spirit takes their place.
    
2. Be respectful to your superiors, if you have any.
    
3. I was sorry to have my name mentioned as one of the great authors, because they have a sad habit of dying off. Chaucer is dead, Spencer is dead, so is Milton, so is Shakespeare, and I’m not feeling so well myself.
    
4. The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.
    
5. A person who won’t read has no advantage over one who can’t.
    
6. As I slowly grow wise I briskly grow cautious.
    
7. If Christ were here there is one thing he would not be--a Christian.
    
8. I like criticism, but it must be my way.
    
9. Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.
    
10. Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint.
     
11. If you tell the truth you don't have to remember anything.
     
12. The church is always trying to get other people to reform; it might not be a bad idea to reform itself a little, by way of example.
     
13. Nothing agrees with me. If I drink coffee, it gives me dyspepsia; if I drink wine, it gives me the gout; if I go to church, it gives me dysentery.
     
14. Among the three or four million cradles now rocking in the land are some which this nation would preserve for ages as sacred things, if we could know which ones they are.
     
15. The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.
     
16. Never put off until tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow.
     
17. Whose property is my body? Probably mine. I so regard it. If I experiment with it, who must be answerable? I, not the State. If I choose injudiciously, does the State die? Oh no.
     
18. The rule is perfect: in all matters of opinion our adversaries are insane.
     
19. Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.
     
20. I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.
     
21. The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.
     
22. To create man was a fine and original idea; but to add the sheep was a tautology.
     
23. Go to heaven for the climate and hell for the company.
     
24. 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.
     
25. I have been complimented many times and they always embarrass me; I always feel that they have not said enough.
     
26. Always acknowledge a fault frankly. This will throw those in authority off their guard and give you opportunity to commit more.
     
27. Whenever a copyright law is to be made or altered, then the idiots assemble.
     
28. Nothing incites to money-crimes like great poverty or great wealth.
     
29. Man was made at the end of the week's work when God was tired.
     
30. Experience has not taught me very much; still it has taught me that it is not wise to criticise a piece of literature, except to an enemy of the person who wrote it; then, if you praise it, that enemy admires you for your honest manliness, & if you dispraise it he admires you for your sound judgment.
     
31. I have criticized absent people so often, and then discovered, to my humiliation, that I was talking with their relatives, that I have grown superstitious about that sort of thing and dropped it.
     
32. It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either.