Mark Twain Quotes

To be good is to be noble; but to show others how to be good is nobler and no trouble.

Adam's temperament was the first command the Deity ever issued to a human being on this planet. And it was the only command Adam would never be able to disobey. It said, "Be weak, be water, be characterless, be cheaply persuadable." The later command, to let the fruit alone, was certain to be disobeyed. Not by Adam himself, but by his temperament — which he did not create and had no authority over.

Always acknowledge a fault. This will throw those in authority off their guard and give you an opportunity to commit more.

The only difference between reality and fiction is that fiction needs to be credible.

France has neither winter nor summer nor morals. Apart from these drawbacks it is a fine country.

Weather is a literary specialty, and no untrained hand can turn out a good article on it.

The self-taught man seldom knows anything accurately, and he does not know a tenth as much as he could have known if he had worked under teachers;

The secret source of humor is not joy but sorrow; there is no humor in heaven.

The average man is profoundly ignorant of countries that lie remote from his own.

I always take Scotch whiskey at night as a preventive of toothache. I have never had the toothache; and what is more, I never intend to have it.

No real gentleman will tell the naked truth in the presence of the ladies.

The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.

All men have heard of the Mormon Bible, but few except the "elect" have seen it, or, at least, taken the trouble to read it. I brought away a copy from Salt Lake. The book is a curiosity to me, it is such a pretentious affair, and yet so "slow," so sleepy; such an insipid mess of inspiration. It is chloroform in print. If Joseph Smith composed this book, the act was a miracle — keeping awake while he did it was, at any rate. If he, according to tradition, merely translated it from certain ancient and mysteriously-engraved plates of copper, which he declares he found under a stone in an out-of-the-way locality, the work of translating was equally a miracle, for the same reason.

The common eye sees only the outside of things, and judges by that, but the seeing eye pierces through and reads the heart and the soul, finding there capacities which the outside didn't indicate or promise, and which the other kind of eye couldn't detect.

Humor is mankind's greatest blessing.