mark twain quotes

Anyone who has had a bull by the tail knows five or six more things
than someone who hasn't.
-- Mark Twain

It was enough to make a body ashamed of the human race.
Mark Twain, spoken by Huck Finn, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale
returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.

-- Mark Twain

It is easy to find fault, if one has that disposition. There was once a man
who, not being able to find any other fault with his coal, complained that
there were too many prehistoric toads in it.
-- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"

I reverently believe that the maker who made us all makes everything in New
England, but the weather. I don't know who makes that, but I think it must be
raw apprentices in the weather-clerks factory who experiment and learn how, in
New England, for board and clothes, and then are promoted to make weather for
countries that require a good article, and will take their custom elsewhere
if they don't get it.
-- Mark Twain

Kindness is a language which the deaf can hear and the blind can read.
-- Mark Twain

The human race is a race of cowards; and I am not only marching in that
procession but carrying a banner.
-- Mark Twain

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

-- Mark Twain

Soap and education are not as sudden as a massacre, but they are more
deadly in the long run.
-- Mark Twain

Whenever you find that you are on the side of the majority, it is time
to reform.

-- Mark Twain

Whenever you find that you are on the side of the majority, it is time
to reform.
-- Mark Twain

Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond; cauliflower is
nothing but cabbage with a college education.
-- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"

Repartee is something we think of twenty-four hours too late.
-- Mark Twain

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.
-- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"

A classic is something that everyone wants to have read
and nobody wants to read.
-- Mark Twain, "The Disappearance of Literature"

Substitute "damn" every time you're inclined to write "very"; your
editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.

-- Mark Twain

In India, "cold weather" is merely a conventional phrase and has come
into use through the necessity of having some way to distinguish
between weather which will melt a brass door-knob and weather which
will only make it mushy.

-- Mark Twain

Kindness is a language which the deaf can hear and the blind can read.
-- Mark Twain

Tell the truth or trump--but get the trick.
-- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"

Adam was but human--this explains it all. He did not want the apple for the
apple's sake, he wanted it only because it was forbidden. The mistake was in
not forbidding the serpent; then he would have eaten the serpent.
-- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"