Top 2442 Quotes & Sayings by Mark Twain - Page 7

A half-truth is the most cowardly of lies.

If you want love and abundance in your life, give it away.

In religion and politics, people's belief's and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second hand, and without examination

Man is the only Patriot. He sets himself apart in his own country, under his own flag, and sneers at the other nations, and keeps multitudinous uniformed assassins on hand at heavy expense to grab slices of other people's countries, and keep them from grabbing slices of his. And in the intervals between campaigns he washes the blood off his hands and works for the universal brotherhood of man - with his mouth.

So much blood has been shed by the Church because of an omission from the Gospel: “Ye shall be indifferent as to what your neighbor's religion is.” Not merely tolerant of it, but indifferent to it. Divinity is claimed for many religions; but no religion is great enough or divine enough to add that new law to its code.

Love your enemy, it will scare the hell out of them.

Writing is easy. All you have to do is cross out the wrong words.

Senator: Person who makes laws in Washington when not doing time.

Heaven goes by favor. If it went by merit, you would stay out and your dog would go in.

I simply can´t resist a cat, particularly a purring one. They are the cleanest, cunningest, and most intelligent things I know, outside of the girl you love, of course.

Imagine, if you will, that I am an idiot. Then, imagine that I am also a Congressman. But, alas, I repeat myself.

Progressive improvement beats delayed perfection.

To trust the God of the Bible is to trust an irascible, vindictive, fierce and ever fickle and changeful master.

There are many humorous things in the world; among them, the white man's notion that he is less savage than the other savages.

I do not wish any reward but to know I have done the right thing.

The Bible has noble poetry in it... and some good morals and a wealth of obscenity, and upwards of a thousand lies.

I am always on the side of the revolutionists, because there never was a revolution unless there were some oppressive and intolerable conditions against which to revolute.

The conviction of the rich that the poor are happier is no more foolish than the conviction of the poor that the rich are.

When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.

Those that respect the law and love sausage should watch neither being made.

There is no unhappiness like the misery of sighting land (and work) again after a cheerful, careless voyage.

The less a man knows the bigger the noise he makes and the higher the salary he commands.

To arrive at a just estimate of a renowned man's character one must judge it by the standards of his time, not ours.

There are only two types of speakers in the world. 1. The nervous and 2. Liars.

The best minds will tell you that when a man has begotten a child he is morally bound to tenderly care for it, protect it from hurt, shield it from disease, clothe it, feed it, bear with its waywardness, lay no hand upon it save in kindness and for its own good, and never in any case inflict upon it a wanton cruelty. God's treatment of his earthly children, every day and every night, is the exact opposite of all that, yet those best minds warmly justify these crimes, condone them, excuse them, and indignantly refuse to regard them as crimes at all, when he commits them.

There's always something about your success that displeases even your best friends.

Of all the animals, man is the only one that lies.

He is useless on top of the ground; he ought to be under it, inspiring the cabbages.

Man was made at the end of the week's work when God was tired.

The institution of royalty in any form is an insult to the human race.

The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.

Adam was not alone in the Garden of Eden, however, and does not deserve all the credit; much is due to Eve, the first woman, and Satan, the first consultant.

It's easy to make friends, but hard to get rid of them.

Loyalty to the country always. Loyalty to the government when it deserves it.

Unconsciously we all have a standard by which we measure other men, and if we examine closely we find that this standard is a very simple one, and is this: we admire them, we envy them, for great qualities we ourselves lack. Hero worship consists in just that. Our heroes are men who do things which we recognize, with regret, and sometimes with a secret shame, that we cannot do. We find not much in ourselves to admire, we are always privately wanting to be like somebody else. If everybody was satisfied with himself, there would be no heroes.

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

The secret to success: find out where people are going and get there first

Honesty: The best of all the lost arts.

If you want me to give you a two-hour presentation, I am ready today. If you want only a five-minute speech, it will take me two weeks to prepare.

What would men be without women? Scarce, sir...mighty scarce.

Reality can be beaten with enough imagination.

It is wiser to find out than to suppose.

If you can't stand solitude, perhaps others find you boring as well.

Too much of anything is bad, but too much good whiskey is barely enough.

I admire him, I frankly confess it; and when his time is come I shall buy a piece of the rope for a keepsake.

I deal with temptation by yielding to it.

What is Man? Man is a noisome bacillus whom Our Heavenly Father created because he was disappointed in the monkey.

What do we call love, hate, charity, revenge, humanity, forgiveness? Different results of the master impulse, the necessity of securing one's self-approval.

Explaining humor is a lot like dissecting a frog, you learn a lot in the process, but in the end you kill it.

Let us be thankful for the fools. But for them the rest of us could not succeed.

One learns peoples through the heart, not the eyes or the intellect.

Work and play are words used to describe the same thing under differing conditions.

The trouble with most of us is that we know too much that ain't so.

I thoroughly disapprove of duels. If a man should challenge me, I would take him kindly and forgivingly by the hand and lead him to a quiet place and kill him.

Let us consider that we are all partially insane. It will explain us to each other; it will unriddle many riddles; it will make clear and simple many things which are involved in haunting and harassing difficulties and obscurities now.

Books are for people who wish they were somewhere else.

It was a place of sin, loose women, whiskey and gambling. It was no place for a good Presbyterian, and I did not long remain one.

Methuselah lived to be 969 years old . You boys and girls will see more in the next fifty years than Methuselah saw in his whole lifetime.

Nature knows no indecencies; man invents them.

If we learned to walk and talk the way we learn to read and write, everyone would limp and stutter.