The quotations of

Mark Twain

American author and humorist

1835–1910

151 quotes, most often on Comedy, Truth & Lies and Morality. Part of the Writers collection.

If you hold a cat by the tail you learn things you cannot learn any other way.
- Experience
Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt.
- Clever Jabs
George Washington, as a boy, was ignorant of the commonest accomplishments of youth. He could not even lie.
“Brief Biographical Sketch of George Washington”, The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, and Other Sketches (1867), ed. John Paul
- Youth
Facts are stubborn, but statistics are more pliable.
- Truth & Lies
I once sent a dozen of my friends a telegram saying ‘flee at once⁠—all is discovered.’ They all left town immediately.
- Morality
Part of the secret of success in life is to eat what you like and let the food fight it out inside.
- Food
Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heal that has crushed it.
- Forgiveness
- Virtue
Each man must for himself alone decide what is right and what is wrong, which course is patriotic and which isn’t. You cannot shirk this and be a man. To decide against your conviction is to be an unqualified and excusable traitor, both to yourself and to your country, let me label you as they may.
Papers of the Adam Family (1939), Part VI: “Two Fragments from a Suppressed Book Called ‘Glances at History’ or ‘Outlines of History’ “
- Responsibility
Love seems the swiftest, but it is the slowest of all growths. No man or woman really knows what perfect love is until they have been married a quarter of a century.
‘s Notebook (1935)
- Love
The holy passion of Friendship is of so sweet and steady and loyal and enduring a nature that it will last through a whole lifetime, if not asked to lend money.
Pudd’nhead Wilson (1894), Ch. 8.
- Friendship
Suppose you were an idiot…and suppose you were a member of Congress…but I repeat myself.
Draft manuscript (c.1881), quoted by Albert Bigelow Paine in Mark Twain: A Biography (1912), p. 724
- Clever Jabs
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.
- Anger
I don’t like to commit myself about heaven and hell⁠—you see, I have friends in both places.
- Morality
Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear.
Pudd’nhead Wilson (1894), Ch. 12.
- Courage
It is by the goodness of God that, in this country, we have three benefits: freedom of speech, freedom of thought, and the wisdom never to use either.
- America

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