Mark Twain quotes

Never try to teach a pig to sing. It wastes time and annoys the pig.

A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval.

What gets us into trouble is not what we don't know. It's what we know for sure that just ain't so.

All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence; then success is sure.

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

Every generalization is false, including this one.

It is better to deserve honors and not have them than to have them and not to deserve them.

Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.

Kindness is a language which the deaf can hear, and the blind can read.

There ain't no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than to travel with them.

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.

Never let your schooling interfere with your education.

Dance like no one is watching. Sing like no one is listening. Love like you've never been hurt and live like it's heaven on Earth.

Following the Equator:

Noise proves nothing. Often a hen who has merely laid an egg cackles as if she had laid an asteroid.

Let us not be too particular. It is better to have old second-hand diamonds than none at all.

Wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been.

Make it a point to do something every day that you don't want to do. This is the golden rule for acquiring the habit of doing your duty without pain.

Pudd'n'head Wilson:

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

Habit is habit, and not to be flung out of the window by any man, but coaxed downstairs one step at a time.

Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear — not absence of fear.

A Connecticut Yankee in King Artur's Court:

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

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer:

Work consists of whatever a body is OBLIGED to do, and...Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.