Quotes from Mark Twain

Homely truth is unpalatable.

It is strange the way the ignorant and inexperienced so often and so undeservedly succeed when the informed and the experienced fail. All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence, and then success is sure.

The weakest of all weak things is a virtue which has not been tested in the fire.

If you don't know how to pronounce a word, say it loudly. Do not compound mispronunciation with inaudibility

All say, 'how hard it is that we have to die' -- a strange complaint to come from the mouths of those who have had to live.

It is never wrong to do the right thing.

I believe I have no prejudices whatsoever. All I need to know is that a man is a member of the human race. That's bad enough for me.

Life would be infinitely happier if we could only be born at the age of eighty and gradually approach eighteen.

Often, the less there is to justify a traditional custom, the harder it is to get rid of it.

She kept up her compliments, and I kept up my determination to deserve them or die.

There is no distinctly native American criminal class save Congress.

I haven't a particle of confidence in a man who has no redeeming petty vices whatsoever.

The Germans have an inhuman way of cutting up their verbs. Now a verb has a hard time enough of it in this world when it's all together. It's downright inhuman to split it up. But that's just what those Germans do. They take part of a verb and put it down here, like a stake, and they take the other part of it and put it away over yonder like another stake, and between these two limits they just shovel in German. from Disappearance of Literature

I have too much respect for the truth to drag it out on every trifling occasion.

I saw a startling sight today, a politician with his hands in his own pockets.

I was seldom able to see an opportunity until it had ceased to be one.

We wish to learn all the curious, outlandish ways of all the different countries, so that we can show off and astonish people when we get home. We wish to excite the envy of our untraveled friends with our strange foreign fashions which we can't shake off.

Sufficient unto the day is one baby. As long as you are in your right mind don't you ever pray for twins. Twins amount to a permanent riot; and there ain't any real difference between triplets and a insurrection. - The Babies speech 1879

I am not interested to know whether vivisection produces results that are profitable to the human race or doesn't...The pain which it inflicts upon unconsenting animals is the basis of my enmity toward it, and it is to me sufficient justification of the enmity without looking further.

Everybody lies...every day, every hour, awake, asleep, in his dreams, in his joy, in his mourning. If he keeps his tongue still his hands, his feet, his eyes, his attitude will convey deception.

When one writes a novel about grown people, he knows exactly where to stop - that is, with a marriage; but when he writes about juveniles, he must stop where he best can.

Memories which someday will become all beautiful when the last annoyance that encumbers them shall have faded out of our minds.

Always read stuff that will make you look good if you die in the middle of it.

Apparently there is nothing that cannot happen today!