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Mark Twain Quotes (1835-1910)
Writer, Novelist
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About Mark Twain
Samuel Langhorne Clemens (November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910), known as Mark Twain, was an American humorist, novelist, writer, and lecturer.
Best Mark Twain Quotes
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Explore our curated collection of the most famous and impactful Mark Twain quotes.
“A baby is an inestimable blessing and bother.”
“Familiarity breeds contempt — and children.”
“Virtue never has been as respectable as money.”
“Prosperity is the best protector of principle.”
“Nature knows no indecencies; man invents them.”
“France has usually been governed by prostitutes.”
“Be respectful to your superiors, if you have any.”
“God's inhumanity to man makes countless thousands mourn.”
“Guides cannot master the subtleties of the American joke.”
“Principles have no real force except when one is well-fed.”
Mark Twain Quotes by Topic
Find exactly what you are looking for by browsing this categorized list of Mark Twain quotes by topic.
Mark Twain on Cats 6 quotes
“A cat is more intelligent than people believe, and can be taught any crime.”
Mark Twain on Culture of India 5 quotes
“It is a good and gentle religion, but inconvenient.”
Mark Twain on United States Congress 5 quotes
“To my mind Judas Iscariot was nothing but a low, mean, premature Congressman.”
Mark Twain on Knowledge 4 quotes
“For all the talk you hear about knowledge being such a wonderful thing, instinct is worth forty of it for real unerringness.”
Mark Twain on India 4 quotes
“India had the start of the whole world in the beginning of things. She had the first civilization; she had the first accumulation of material wealth; she was populous with deep thinkers and subtle intellects; she had mines, and woods, and a fruitful soil. It would seem as if she should have kept the lead, and should be to-day not the meek dependent of an alien master, but mistress of the world, and delivering law and command to every tribe and nation in it. But, in truth, there was never any possibility of such supremacy for her.”
Mark Twain on Truth 3 quotes
View all 3 quotes on Truth →Mark Twain on Pottery 3 quotes
“I am content to be a bric-a-bracker and a Ceramiker.”
Mark Twain on Lying 3 quotes
“An experienced, industrious, ambitious, and often quite picturesque liar.”
Mark Twain on Patriotism 3 quotes
“The soul and substance of what customarily ranks as patriotism is moral cowardice — and always has been.”
Mark Twain on Pauperism 3 quotes
“India has 2,000,000 gods, and worships them all. In religion, other countries are paupers; India is the only millionaire.”
Mark Twain on Church 3 quotes
“The church is always trying to get other people to reform; it might not be a bad idea to reform itself a little, by way of example.”
Mark Twain on German language 3 quotes
“Whenever the literary German dives into a sentence, that is the last you are going to see of him till he emerges on the other side of his Atlantic with his verb in his mouth.”
What Mark Twain Said About Others
Discover personal opinions Mark Twain shared regarding contemporaries.
Mark Twain on Adam and Eve 9 quotes
“Adam and Eve had many advantages but the principal one was, that they escaped teething.”
Mark Twain on Jane Austen 3 quotes
“Jane Austen's books, too, are absent from this library. Just that one omission alone would make a fairly good library out of a library that hadn't a book in it.”
Mark Twain on Helen Keller 3 quotes
“The two greatest characters in the 19th century are Napoleon and Helen Keller. Napoleon tried to conquer the world by physical force and failed. Helen tried to conquer the world by power of mind — and succeeded!”
Mark Twain on Joan of Arc 2 quotes
“Whatever thing men call great, look for it in Joan of Arc, and there you will find it.”
Mark Twain on Jesus
Mark Twain on Cecil Rhodes
Mark Twain on Michelangelo
Mark Twain on Sarah Bernhardt
Mark Twain on Women
“When you want to get revenge on a woman you don't kill her—bosh! you go for her looks. You slit her nostrils—you notch her ears like a sow!”
Mark Twain on Eve
Mark Twain on J. M. Barrie
“It is my belief that Peter Pan is a great and refining and uplifting benefaction to this sordid and money-mad age; and the next best play is a long way behind.”
Mark Twain on Mera Jism Meri Marzi
“Whose property is my body? Probably mine. I so regard it. If I experiment with it, who must be answerable? I, not the State. If I choose injudiciously, does the State die? Oh, no.”
Quotes About Mark Twain
Gain deeper perspective through quotes about Mark Twain from others.
William Faulkner on Mark Twain
“[A] hack writer who would not have been considered fourth rate in Europe, who tricked out a few of the old proven 'sure fire' literary skeletons with sufficient local color to intrigue the superficial and the lazy.”
Rosario Ferré interview on Mark Twain
“If the writer is trying to interpret the meaning of life, all of what he writes is autobiographical. Think of Mark Twain, for example. You can tell from Twain's autobiography that Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn are versions, or imagined stages, of Twain himself. He was writing about his own life, about how it was or could have been. And he's still trying to reinterpret his life or to translate it when he is writing his autobiography, only he is not doing it with a mask anymore, rather as a testimony.”
Albert Bigelow Paine on Mark Twain
“He [Mark Twain] spoke of humor, and thought it must be one of the chief attributes of God. He cited plants and animals that were distinctly humorous in form and in their characteristics. These he declared were God's jokes.”
Ernest Hemingway on Mark Twain
Samuel E. Moffett on Mark Twain
“From his earliest childhood young Clemens had been of an adventurous disposition. Before he was thirteen he had been extracted three times from the Mississippi and six times from Bear Creek in a substantially drowned condition, but his mother, with the high confidence in his future that never deserted her, merely remarked: "People who are born to be hanged are safe in the water."”
Naomi Shihab Nye on Mark Twain
“There is only one known video of Mark Twain,/wearing a white linen suit in 1909,/walking outside a house in Connecticut,/talking with Thomas Edison.”
George Bernard Shaw on Mark Twain
“I am persuaded that the future historian of America will find your works as indispensable to him as a French historian finds the political tracts of Voltaire.”
Art Young: His Life and Times on Mark Twain
“Like Mark Twain, Eugene Field was an ardent dissenter against the prevailing social order in private conversation, although not much of that dissent was found in his writings-nor in Twain's. Both of those men were born too soon, or perhaps were just naturally cautious of being combative in public. They were cast by Fate into a period which we know today as the era of rugged individualism-a nation marching behind a banner bearing the legend: "Self conquers all!" Meaning, of course, that it's up to you alone-a doctrine which practically everybody across the land took for granted, and one which hangs on in spite of its falsity. Yet Field and Twain occasionally exhibited signs of doubt and wrote satirical comment on American life. Field poked fun at the shallow culture of the Chicago pork packers, and Mark Twain indulged in brief outbursts of anarchistic protest. None of their onsets, however, was incisive enough to make the big financiers question their loyalty to the existing economic and social system.”
Disputed Quotes
Quotes attributed to Mark Twain that are questionable.
“Let us endeavor to live so that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.”
Misattributed Quotes
Quotes mistakenly credited to Mark Twain
“Describing her first day back in grade school after a long absence, a teacher said, "It was like trying to hold 35 corks under water at the same time."”
“There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.”
“If voting made any difference, they wouldn't let us do it.”
“I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time.
• Translation: I have only made this [letter] longer, because I have not had the opportunity to make it shorter.”
• Translation: I have only made this [letter] longer, because I have not had the opportunity to make it shorter.”
“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”
“Our most valuable and most instructive materials in the history of man are treasured up in India.”
“Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it.”
“For example, in Year 1 that useless letter "c" would be dropped to be replased either by "k" or "s", and likewise "x" would no longer be part of the alphabet. The only kase in which "c" would be retained would be the "ch" formation, which will be dealt with later. Year 2 might reform "w" spelling, so that "which" and "one" would take the same konsonant, wile Year 3 might well abolish "y" replasing it with "i" and Iear 4 might fiks the "g/j" anomali wonse and for all. Jenerally, then, the improvement would kontinue iear bai iear with Iear 5 doing awai with useless double konsonants, and Iears 6-12 or so modifaiing vowlz and the rimeining voist and unvoist konsonants. Bai Iear 15 or sou, it wud fainali bi posibl tu meik ius ov thi ridandant letez "c", "y" and "x" — bai now jast a memori in the maindz ov ould doderez — tu riplais "ch", "sh", and "th" rispektivli. Fainali, xen, aafte sam 20 iers ov orxogrefkl riform, wi wud hev a lojikl, kohirnt speling in ius xrewawt xe Ingliy-spiking werld.”
“Politicians are like diapers: they should be changed often, and for the same reason*”
“When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years.”
“No man ever entered the Presidency so profoundly and widely distrusted as Chester Alan Arthur, and no one ever retired … more generally respected, alike by political friend and foe.”
About Mark Twain
Samuel Langhorne Clemens (November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910), known as Mark Twain, was an American humorist, novelist, writer, and lecturer.