42 Mark Twain Quotes

"Wrinkles should merely indicate where the smiles have been."

"A clear conscience is the sure sign of a bad memory."

"Never argue with stupid people, they will drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience."

"If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything."

"There are basically two types of people. People who accomplish things and people who claim to have accomplished things. The first group is less crowded."

"It usually takes me more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech."

"Good judgement is the result of experience and experience the result of bad judgement."

"Giving up smoking is the easiest thing in the world. I know because I’ve done it thousands of times."

"Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it."

"You can’t depend on your judgment when your imagination is out of focus."

"We are always anxious to be distinguished for a talent which we do not possess than to be praised for the fifteen which we do possess."

"A circle is a round straight line with a hole in the middle."

"All creatures kill, there seems to be no exception; but of the whole list, man is the only one that kills for fun."

"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."

"No accident ever comes late; it always arrives precisely on time."

"How easy it is to make people believe a lie and how hard it is to undo that work again."

"Whenever the human race assembles to a number exceeding four, it cannot stand free speech."

"Good breeding consists in concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of the other person."

"Nature knows no indecencies; man invents them."

"Love seems the swiftest, but it is the slowest of all growths. No man or woman really knows what perfect love is until they have been married a quarter of a century."

"Education consists mainly in what we have unlearned."

"Biographies are but clothes and buttons of the man, the biography of the man himself cannot be written."

"The fact that man knows right from wrong proves his intellectual superiority to the other creatures; but the fact that he can do wrong proves his moral inferiority to any creature."

"Everybody’s private motto: It’s better to be popular than right."

"Be respectful to your superiors, if you have any."

"As I slowly grow wise, I briskly grow cautious."

"A round man cannot be expected to fit in a square hole right away. He must have time to modify his shape."

"Get your facts first and then you can distort them as much as you please."

"I wanted to damage every man in the place and every woman; and not in their bodies or in their estate, but in their vanity, the place where feeble and foolish people are most vulnerable."

"Honesty is the best policy, when there is money in it."

"Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest."

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

"Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society."

"A man is never more truthful than when he acknowledges himself a liar."

"Principles have no real force except when one is well-fed."

"If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man."

"A crowded police docket is the surest of all signs that trade is brisk and money plenty."

"To promise not to do a thing is the surest way in the world to make a body want to go and do that very thing."

"Many a small thing has been made large by the right kind of advertising."

"Man is the Only Animal that Blushes or needs to."

"The only way to keep your health is to eat what you don’t want, drink what you don’t like and do what you’d rather not."

"Often, the surest way to convey misinformation is to tell the strict truth."