Mark Twain Biography | Inspiration Quotations | Motivation Quotes

Mark Twain Motivational Quotations:

• “Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it.”

• “My mother had a great deal of trouble with me, but I think she enjoyed it.”

•  “The secret of getting ahead is getting started.”

• “Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear.”

•  “Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see.”

•  “You can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.”​ 
• “Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.”

•  “In the Spring, I have counted 136 different kinds of weather inside of 24 hours.”

•  “All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence, and then success is sure.”

•  “Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please.”

•  “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's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog.”

•  “Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company.”

  

   

• “Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don't mind, it doesn't matter.”

•  “All generalizations are false, including this one.”

•  “Cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education.”

•  “The human race has one really effective weapon, and that is laughter.”

•  “Climate is what we expect, weather is what we get.”

•  “In the first place, God made idiots. That was for practice. Then he made school boards.”

•  “Thunder is good, thunder is impressive; but it is lightning that does the work.”

•  “Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.”

•  “When angry, count to four; when very angry, swear.”

•  “If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything.”

•  “When you fish for love, bait with your heart, not your brain.”

•  “The only way to keep your health is to eat what you don't want, drink what you don't like, and do what you'd rather not.”

•  “Many a small thing has been made large by the right kind of advertising.”

•  “It's good sportsmanship to not pick up lost golf balls while they are still rolling.”

•  “Humor is mankind's greatest blessing.”

•  “Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.”

•  “Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.”

•  “Giving up smoking is the easiest thing in the world. I know because I've done it thousands of times.”

•  “Suppose you were an idiot, and suppose you were a member of Congress; but I repeat myself.”

•  “Facts are stubborn, but statistics are more pliable.”

•  “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.”

•  “It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare.”

•  “Do the right thing. It will gratify some people and astonish the rest.”

•  “Denial ain't just a river in Egypt.”

•  “All emotion is involuntary when genuine.”

•  “Everything has its limit - iron ore cannot be educated into gold.”

•  “Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond; cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education.”

•  “The best way to cheer yourself up is to try to cheer somebody else up.”

•  “There are basically two types of people. People who accomplish things, and people who claim to have accomplished things. The first group is less crowded.”

•  “Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint.”

•  “I make it a rule never to smoke while I'm sleeping.”

  

   

• “I don't like to commit myself about heaven and hell - you see, I have friends in both places.”

•  “Wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been.”

•  “Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.”

•  “When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained.”

•  “I never smoke to excess - that is, I smoke in moderation, only one cigar at a time.”

•  “Don't let schooling interfere with your education.”

•  “Under certain circumstances, urgent circumstances, desperate circumstances, profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer.”

•  “There are lies, damned lies and statistics.”

•  “There is no sadder sight than a young pessimist.”

•  “Be careless in your dress if you must, but keep a tidy soul.”

•  “The right word may be effective, but no word was ever as effective as a rightly timed pause.”

•  “I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened.”

•  “The trouble ain't that there is too many fools, but that the lightning ain't distributed right.”

•  “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.”

•  “Honesty is the best policy - when there is money in it.”

•  “Man is the only animal that blushes - or needs to.”

•  “Laws control the lesser man... Right conduct controls the greater one.”

•  “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.”

•  “All right, then, I'll go to hell.”

•  “Loyalty to the Nation all the time, loyalty to the Government when it deserves it.”

•  “There is no distinctly American criminal class - except Congress.”

•  “Optimist: day dreamer more elegantly spelled.”

•  “If man could be crossed with the cat it would improve man, but deteriorate the cat.”

•  “The lack of money is the root of all evil.”

•  “Sometimes too much to drink is barely enough.”

•  “When in doubt tell the truth.”

•  “A person who won't read has no advantage over one who can't read.”

•  “The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.”

•  “The main difference between a cat and a lie is that a cat only has nine lives.”

•  “The very ink with which history is written is merely fluid prejudice.”

•  “It ain't those parts of the Bible that I can't understand that bother me, it is the parts that I do understand.”

• “Man was made at the end of the week's work, when God was tired.”

•  “When red-haired people are above a certain social grade their hair is auburn.”

•  “Buy land, they're not making it anymore.”

•  “Let us not be too particular; it is better to have old secondhand diamonds than none at all.”

•  “'Classic.' A book which people praise and don't read.”

•  “Civilization is the limitless multiplication of unnecessary necessities.”

•  “But who prays for Satan? Who, in eighteen centuries, has had the common humanity to pray for the one sinner that needed it most?”

•  “The man who is a pessimist before 48 knows too much; if he is an optimist after it, he knows too little.”

•  “Golf is a good walk spoiled.”

•  “I don't give a damn for a man that can only spell a word one way.”

•  “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.”

•  “I can live for two months on a good compliment.”

•  “Better a broken promise than none at all.”

•  “Loyalty to petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul.”

•  “Let us endeavor so to live so that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.”

•  “The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter - 'tis the difference between the lightning-bug and the lightning.”

•  “I never let schooling interfere with my education.”

•  “Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do. Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.”

•  “The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter - 'tis the difference between the lightning-bug and the lightning.”

•  “By trying we can easily learn to endure adversity. Another man's, I mean.”

•  “What a wee little part of a person's life are his acts and his words! His real life is led in his head, and is known to none but himself.”

•  “The Christian's Bible is a drug store. Its contents remain the same, but the medical practice changes.”

•  “It is just like man's vanity and impertinence to call an animal dumb because it is dumb to his dull perceptions.”

•  “Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do. Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.”

•  “Do not tell fish stories where the people know you; but particularly, don't tell them where they know the fish.”

•  “Few of us can stand prosperity. Another man's, I mean.”

•  “The Christian's Bible is a drug store. Its contents remain the same, but the medical practice changes.”

•  “We Americans... bear the ark of liberties of the world.”

•  “Do not tell fish stories where the people know you; but particularly, don't tell them where they know the fish.”

•  “I have been complimented many times and they always embarrass me; I always feel that they have not said enough.”

•  “When a person cannot deceive himself the chances are against his being able to deceive other people.”

•  “It was wonderful to find America, but it would have been more wonderful to miss it.”

•  “George Washington, as a boy, was ignorant of the commonest accomplishments of youth. He could not even lie.”

• "Substitute 'damn' every time you're inclined to write 'very'; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.”

•  “The finest clothing made is a person's own skin, but, of course, society demands something more than this.”

•  “The wit knows that his place is at the tail of a procession.”

•  “The educated Southerner has no use for an 'r', except at the beginning of a word.”

•  “Wit is the sudden marriage of ideas which, before their union, were not perceived to have any relation.”

•  “Why is it that we rejoice at a birth and grieve at a funeral? It is because we are not the person involved.”

• “Repartee is something we think of twenty-four hours too late.”