Famous Mark Twain quotes

Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.
- 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

Everything is going to be okay in the end. If it is not the okay, it is not the end.
- Mark Twain

A person with a new idea is a crank until the idea succeeds.
- Mark Twain

All generalizations are false, including this one.
- Mark Twain

It's not the SIZE of the dog in the fight, but the size of the FIGHT in the dog.
- Mark Twain

It's no wonder that truth is stranger than fiction. Fiction has to make sense.
- Mark Twain

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed with 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.
- 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 how much he had learned in seven years.
- Mark Twain

Wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been.
- Mark Twain

When I was younger, I could remember anything, whether it happened or not.
- Mark Twain

Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don't mind, it doesn't matter.
- Mark Twain

To succeed in life, you need two things: ignorance and confidence.
- Mark Twain

All you need is ignorance and confidence and the success is sure.
- Mark Twain

A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval.
- Mark Twain

Golf is a good walk spoiled.
- Mark Twain

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.
- Mark Twain

I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.
- Mark Twain

Pity is for the living, envy is for the dead.
- Mark Twain

Life would be infinitely happier if we could only be born at the age of eighty and gradually approach eighteen.
- Mark Twain

The world owes you nothing. It was here first.
- 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

Round man cannot be expected to fit in a square hole right away. He must have time to modify his shape.
- Mark Twain

Thunder is good, thunder is impressive; but it is lightning that does the work.”
- Mark Twain

The man with a new idea is a crank until the idea succeeds.
- Mark Twain

There are people who can do all fine and heroic things but one: keep from telling their happiness to the unhappy.
- Mark Twain

I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did. I said I didn’t know.”
- Mark Twain

You can’t depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.
- Mark Twain

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that 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.
- Mark Twain

You believe in a book that has talking animals, wizards, witches, demons, sticks turning into snakes, burning bushes food falling from the sky, people walking on water, and all sorts of magical absurd and primitive stories, and you say that we are the ones that need help.
- Mark Twain

The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.
- Mark Twain

Name the greatest of all inventors. Accident.
- Mark Twain

It’s a classic… something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.
- Mark Twain

Virtue has never been as respectable as money.
- Mark Twain

How empty is a theory in the presence of fact!
- Mark Twain

You should never do anything wicked and lay it on your brother, when it is just as convenient to lay it on some other boy.
- Mark Twain

There is nothing in the world like persuasive speech to fuddle the mental apparatus.
- Mark Twain

Never put off ‘til tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow.
- Mark Twain

Too much of anything is bad, but too much of good whiskey is barely enough.
- Mark Twain

Don’t wait. The time will never be just right.
- Mark Twain

Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.
- Mark Twain

A full belly is little worth where the mind is starved.
- Mark Twain

Never put off until tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow.
- Mark Twain

I do not like work even when someone else does it.
- Mark Twain

The man who is a pessimist before 48 knows too much; if he is an optimist after it he knows too little.
- Mark Twain

We all do no end of feeling, and we mistake it for thinking. And out of it we get an aggregation which we consider a boon. Its name is public opinion. It is held in reverence. Some think it the voice of God.
- Mark Twain

A habit cannot be tossed out the window. It must be coaxed down the stairs a step at a time.
- Mark Twain