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Biographical Information
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Famous Mark Twain Quotes
All you need is ignorance and confidence and the success is sure.
I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened.
The best way to cheer yourself up is to try to cheer somebody else up.
A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.
A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval.
A man is never more truthful than when he acknowledges himself a liar.
A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way.
A man's character may be learned from the adjectives which he habitually uses in conversation.
A person who won't read has no advantage over one who can't read.
A person with a new idea is a crank until the idea succeeds.
A round man cannot be expected to fit in a square hole right away. He must have time to modify his shape.
Action speaks louder than words but not nearly as often.
Advertisements contain the only truths to be relied on in a newspaper.
Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand.
Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don't mind, it doesn't matter.
All generalizations are false, including this one.
All right, then, I'll go to hell.
Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest.
Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured.
Any emotion, if it is sincere, is involuntary.
Apparently there is nothing that cannot happen today.
As an example to others, and not that I care for moderation myself, it has always been my rule never to smoke when asleep, and never to refrain from smoking when awake.
Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint.
Be careless in your dress if you will, but keep a tidy soul.
Better a broken promise than none at all.
Biographies are but the clothes and buttons of the man. The biography of the man himself cannot be written.
But who prays for Satan? Who, in eighteen centuries, has had the common humanity to pray for the one sinner that needed it most?
Buy land, they're not making it anymore.
By trying we can easily endure adversity. Another man's, I mean.
Cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education.
Civilization is the limitless multiplication of unnecessary necessities.
'Classic.' A book which people praise and don't read.
Climate is what we expect, weather is what we get.
Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.
Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear.
Denial ain't just a river in Egypt.
Do the right thing. It will gratify some people and astonish the rest.
Do the thing you fear most and the death of fear is certain.
Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.
Don't let schooling interfere with your education.
Don't part with your illusions. When they are gone, you may still exist, but you have ceased to live.
Don't say the old lady screamed. Bring her on and let her scream.
Don't tell fish stories where the people know you; but particularly, don't tell them where they know the fish.
Drag your thoughts away from your troubles... by the ears, by the heels, or any other way you can manage it.
Education consists mainly of what we have unlearned.
Everything has its limit - iron ore cannot be educated into gold.
Everything human is pathetic. The secret source of humor itself is not joy but sorrow. There is no humor in heaven.
Facts are stubborn, but statistics are more pliable.
Familiarity breeds contempt - and children.
Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example.
Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn't.
Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.
George Washington, as a boy, was ignorant of the commonest accomplishments of youth. He could not even lie.
Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please.
Giving up smoking is the easiest thing in the world. I know because I've done it thousands of times.
Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company.
God made the Idiot for practice, and then He made the School Board.
Golf is a good walk spoiled.
Good breeding consists in concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of the other person.
Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.
Grief can take care if itself, but to get the full value of a joy you must have somebody to divide it with.
He is now rising from affluence to poverty.
Honesty is the best policy - when there is money in it.
Humor is mankind's greatest blessing.
Humor must not professedly teach and it must not professedly preach, but it must do both if it would live forever.
I can live for two months on a good compliment.
I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it.
I don't give a damn for a man that can only spell a word one way.
I don't like to commit myself about heaven and hell - you see, I have friends in both places.
I have been complimented many times and they always embarrass me; I always feel that they have not said enough.
I have made it a rule never to smoke more that one cigar at a time.
I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.
I have never taken any exercise except sleeping and resting.
I make it a rule never to smoke while I'm sleeping.
I must have a prodigious quantity of mind; it takes me as much as a week sometimes to make it up.
I never let schooling interfere with my education.
I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did. I said I didn't know.
I was seldom able to see an opportunity until it had ceased to be one.
I've never let my school interfere with my education.
Ideally a book would have no order to it, and the reader would have to discover his own.
If man could be crossed with the cat, it would improve man but deteriorate the cat.
If you hold a cat by the tail you learn things you cannot learn any other way.
If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything.
In the first place, God made idiots. That was for practice. Then he made school boards.
In the Spring, I have counted 136 different kinds of weather inside of 24 hours.
It ain't those parts of the Bible that I can't understand that bother me, it is the parts that I do understand.
It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so.
It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native criminal class except Congress.
It is better to deserve honors and not have them than to have them and not deserve them.
It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.
It is better to take what does not belong to you than to let it lie around neglected.
It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them.
It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare.
It is easier to stay out than get out.
It is just like man's vanity and impertinence to call an animal dumb because it is dumb to his dull perceptions.
It is not best that we should all think alike; it is a difference of opinion that makes horse races.
It usually takes me more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech.
It was wonderful to find America, but it would have been more wonderful to miss it.
It's good sportsmanship to not pick up lost golf balls while they are still rolling.
It's no wonder that truth is stranger than fiction. Fiction has to make sense.
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