Mark Twain

Ranking: 12th
Biography of Mark Twain
Search Mark Twain's quotes

<< Previous 1 2 3 4 5 Next >>
Quote	Categories	Rating	Rate
"I am different from Washington; I have a higher, grander standard of principle. Washington could not lie. I can lie, but I won't."	Comedy, Honesty
"I shall never use profanity except in discussing house rent and taxes."	God, Taxes
"Work is a necessary evil to be avoided."	Work
"Just the omission of Jane Austen's books alone would make a fairly good library out of a library that hadn't a book in it."	Success, Insults
"Frankenstein took some flesh and bones and blood and made a man out of them; the man ran away and fell to raping and robbing and murdering everywhere, and Frankenstein was horrified and in despair, and said, "I made him, without asking his consent, and it makes me responsible for every crime he commits. I am the criminal, he is innocent." ... [That's exactly] the case of God and man... God made man, without man's consent, and made his nature, too; made it vicious instead of angelic, and then said, "Be angelic, or I will ill punish you and destroy you." But no matter, God is responsible for everything man does, all the same; He can't get around that fact. There is only one Criminal, and it is not man."	Fear
"Name the greatest of all inventors. Accident."	Luck
"Life would be infinitely happier if we could only be born at the age of eighty and gradually approach eighteen."	Age
"As to the adjective, when in doubt, strike it out."	Writing
"We are chameleons, and our partialities and prejudices change place with an easy and blessed facility, and we are soon wonted to the change and happy in it."	Economics, Change
"The people of those foreign countries are very, very ignorant. They looked curiously at the costumes we had brought from the wilds of America. They observed that we talked loudly at table sometimes. They noticed that we looked out for expenses and got what we conveniently could out of a franc, and wondered where in the mischief we came from. In Paris they just simply opened their eyes and stared when we spoke to them in French! We never did succeed in making those idiots understand their own language."	America
"Thanksgiving Day, a function which originated in New England two or three centuries ago when those people recognized that they really had something to be thankful for - annually, not oftener - if they had succeeded in exterminating their neighbors, the Indians, during the previous twelve months instead of getting exterminated by their neighbors, the Indians. Thanksgiving Day became a habit, for the reason that in the course of time, as the years drifted on, it was perceived that the exterminating had ceased to be mutual and was all on the white man's side, consequently on the Lord's side; hence it was proper to thank the Lord for it and extend the usual annual compliments."	Holidays
"Biographies are but the clothes and buttons of the man - the biography of the man himself cannot be written."	Quotations
"Deep down in me I knowed it was a lie, and He knowed it. You can't pray a lie - I found that out."	Prayer
"It used to take me all vacation to grow a new hide in place of the one they flogged off me during school term."	Economics, School
"Is the Archbishop's blessing any more meaningful than the Politician's handshake? They come, they go, with bigger things than us on their minds."	Wisdom
"Yesterday, everybody smoked his last cigar, took his last drink and swore his last oath. Today, we are a pious and exemplary community. Thirty days from now, we shall have cast our reformation to the winds and gone to cutting our ancient shortcomings considerably shorter than ever."	Quotations
"In the real world, the right thing never happens in the right place and the right time. It is the job of journalists and historians to make it appear that it has."	Quotations
"Biographies are but the clothes and buttons of the man - the biography of the man himself cannot be written."	Miscellaneous
"All religions issue bibles against him, and say most injurious things about him, but we never hear his side."	Quotations
"It is my belief that nearly any invented quotation, played with confidence, stands a good chance to deceive."	Quotations
<< Previous 1 2 3 4 5 Next >>

Browse Mark Twain quotes by category:

Age	America	Anger
Animals	Anti-God	Anti-Religion
Books	Change	Comedy
Confidence	Conformity	Courage
Death	Economics	Education
Emotion	Fear	Food
Forgiveness	God	Government
Happiness	Health	Holidays
Honesty	Ignorance	Insults
Joy	Knowledge	Learning
Lies	Life	Love
Luck	Miscellaneous	Money
Patriotism	Prayer	Quotations
Religion	School	Sex
Sleep	Success	Talent
Taxes	Time	War
Wisdom	Work	Writing