Quotes from Mark Twain

It may have happened, it may not have happened but it could have happened.

His head was an hour-glass; it could stow an idea, but it had to do it a grain at a time, not the whole idea at once.

Everything has its limit - iron ore cannot be educated into gold.

Let us make a special effort to stop communicating with each other, so we can have some conversation.

I felt so lonesome I most wished I was dead. The stars were shining, and the leaves rustled in the woods ever so mournful; and I heard an owl, away off, who-whooing about somebody that was dead, and a whippowill and a dog crying about somebody that was going to die;

The gentle reader will never, never know what a consummate ass he can become until he goes abroad. I speak now, of course, in the supposition that the gentle reader has not been abroad, and therefore is not already a consummate ass. If the case be otherwise, I beg his pardon and extend to him the cordial hand of fellowship and call him brother. I shall always delight to meet an ass after my own heart when I have finished my travels.

Humor is the great thing, the saving thing. The minute it crops up, all our irritations and resentments slip away and a sunny spirit takes their place.

I was born lazy. I am no lazier now than I was forty years ago, but that is because I reached the limit forty years ago. You can't go beyond possibility.

Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons  attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.

I have been complimented many times and they always embarrass me; I always feel they have not said enough.

I wonder if God created man because He was disappointed with the monkey.

It's not as bad as it sounds.

Let us draw the curtain of charity over the rest of this scene

In Boston they ask, how much does he know? In New York, how much is he worth? In Philadelphia, who were his parents?

By trying we can easily learn to endure adversity – another man's, I mean.

A person with a new idea is a crank until the idea succeeds.

Every man is a moon and has a side which he turns toward nobody: you have to slip around behind it if you want to see it.

What's your name? Becky Thatcher. What's yours? Oh, I know. It's Thomas Sawyer. That's the name they lick me by. I'm Tom when I'm good. You call me Tom, will you? Yes

Satan hasn't a single salaried helper; the Opposition employs a million.

He had discovered a great law of human action, without knowing it, namely, that, in order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to attain.

Some people get an education without going to college. The rest get it after they get out.

Whoever is happy will make others happy too.

They said they would rather be outlaws a year in Sherwood Forest than President of the United States forever.

One must travel, to learn. Every day, now, old Scriptural phrases that never possessed any significance for me before, take to themselves a meaning.