A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.
Mark Twain
- Life
- 1835-1910
- Occupations
- journalist, novelist, autobiographer
- Notable works
- Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
Facts: Wikidata (CC0), as of 2026-07-09
Mark Twain is quotation's biggest magnet: if a line is witty, cynical, and American, the internet will eventually hand it to him. Researchers at the Center for Mark Twain Studies keep a running list of 'things Twain never said' -- including 'The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco'. The genuine article is usually sharper and sourced to a named book, letter, or speech.
By his father he is English, by his mother he is American– to my mind the blend which makes the perfect man.
Mark Twain
By his father he is English, by his mother he is American-- to my mind the blend which makes the perfect man.
Mark Twain
Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.
Mark Twain
Don't part with your illusions. When they are gone you may still exist, but you have ceased to live.
Mark Twain
Everyone is a moon and has a dark side which he never shows to anyone.
Mark Twain
Get a bicycle. You will not regret it, if you live.
Mark Twain
God made the Idiot for practice, and then He made the School Board.
Mark Twain
Golf is a good walk ruined.
Mark Twain
Golf is a good walk spoiled.
Mark Twain
If the man doesn't believe as we do, we say he is a crank, and that settles it. I mean, it does nowadays, because now we can't burn him.
Mark Twain
If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosper, he will not bite you......this is the principle difference between man and a dog.
Mark Twain
I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.
Mark Twain
I refused to attend his funeral. But I wrote a very nice letter explaining that I approved of it.
Mark Twain
Let us endeavour so to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.
Mark Twain
Loyalty to a petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul.
Mark Twain
Never let your schooling interfere with your education.
Mark Twain
No man should [do that] unless he is the King of England — or has a tapeworm.
Mark Twain
No man should [do that] unless he is the King of England -- or has a tapeworm. on whether people in public life should refer to themselves in the third-person
Mark Twain
The altar cloth of one aeon is the doormat of the next.
Mark Twain
The cat, having sat upon a hot stove lid, will not sit upon a hot stove lid again. But he won't sit upon a cold stove lid, either.
Mark Twain
The difference between the right word and almost the right word is the difference between lightning and lightning bug.
Mark Twain
The easy confidence with which I know another man’s religion is folly teaches me to suspect that my own is also.
Mark Twain
The proper office of a friend is to side with you when you are in the wrong. Nearly anybody will side with you when you are in the right.
Mark Twain
The reason why truth is so much stranger than fiction is that there is no requirement for it to be consistent.
Mark Twain
Thunder is good. Thunder is impressive. But it's the lightning does the work.
Mark Twain
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't. "Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar," ch. 15, Following the Equator (1897)
Mark Twain
We are chameleons, and our partialities and prejudices change place with an easy and blessed facility, and we are soon wonted to the change and happy in it.
Mark Twain
What ought to be done to the man who invented the celebrating of anniversaries? Mere killing would be too light.
Mark Twain
When angry, count four; when very angry, swear.
Mark Twain
Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it’s time to pause and reflect.
Mark Twain
When the human race has once acquired a supersitition, nothing short of death is ever likely to remove it.
Mark Twain
When we remember that we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained.
Mark Twain
Wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been.
Mark Twain
Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don't mind, it doesn't matter.
Mark Twain
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 the old man had learned in seven years.
Mark Twain
Eat a live frog first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day.
Mark Twain
Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear -- not absence of fear.
Mark Twain
Habit is habit, and not to be flung out of the window by any man, but coaxed downstairs a step at a time.
Mark Twain
Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do, and Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.
Mark Twain
The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.
Mark Twain
The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
Mark Twain
The secret of getting ahead is getting started.
Mark Twain