Quotes from Mark Twain

I cannot call to mind a single instance where I have ever been irreverent, except toward the things which were sacred to other people.

It's not the good that die young, it's the lucky.

Having faith is believing in something you just know ain't true.

Why is it that we rejoice at a birth and grieve at a funeral? It is because we are not the person involved.

I have been studying the traits and dispositions of the lower animals (so called) and contrasting them with the traits and dispositions of man. I find the result humiliating to me.

Only one thing is impossible for God: To find any sense in any copyright law on the planet.

It is just like man's vanity and impertinence to call an animal dumb because it is dumb to his dull perceptions.

Learning softeneth the heart and breedeth gentleness and charity.

Do the thing you fear the most and the death of fear is certain.

A cat is more intelligent than people believe, and can be taught any crime.

To place man properly at the present time, he stands somewhere between the angels and the French.

The very ink with which all history is written is merely fluid prejudice.

The pitifulest thing out is a mob; that's what an army is--a mob; they don't fight with courage that's born in them, but with courage that's borrowed from their mass, and from their officers. But a mob without any MAN at the head of it is BENEATH pitifulness.

A fully belly is little worth where the mind is starved.

How empty is theory in the presence of fact!

The secret of success is making your vocation your vacation.

it's the little things that smoothes people's roads the most

There are some books that refuse to be written. They stand their ground year after year and will not be persuaded. It isn't because the book is not there and worth being written -- it is only because the right form of the story does not present itself. There is only one right form for a story and if you fail to find that form the story will not tell itself.

When even the brightest mind in our world has been trained up from childhood in a superstition of any kind, it will never be possible for that mind, in its maturity, to examine sincerely, dispassionately, and conscientiously any evidence or any circumstance which shall seem to cast a doubt upon the validity of that superstition. I doubt if I could do it myself.

When majority is insane, sane must go to asylum.

Don't go around thinking the world owes you a living. It was here first.

There is no character, howsoever good and fine, but it can be destroyed by ridicule, howsoever poor and witless. Observe the ass, for instance: his character is about perfect, he is the choicest spirit among all the humbler animals, yet see what ridicule has brought him to. Instead of feeling complimented when we are called an ass, we are left in doubt.

People talk about beautiful relationships between two persons of the same sex. What is the best of that sort as compared with the friendship of man and wife where the best impulses and highest ideals of both are the same? There is no place for comparison between the two friendships; the one is earthly, the other divine.

The signs of excessive indulgence in this destructive pastime are easily detectable. They are these: A disposition to eat, to drink, to smoke, to meet together convivially, to laugh, to joke, and tell indelicate stories— and mainly, a yearning to paint pictures.