Mark Twain quotes

You can’t pray a lie—I found that out.

You don’t know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain’t no matter. That book was made by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly. There was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth.

Well,” he says, “there’s excuse for picks and letting-on in a case like this; if it warn’t so, I wouldn’t approve of it, nor I wouldn’t stand by and see the rules broke—because right is right, and wrong is wrong, and a body ain’t got no business doing wrong when he ain’t ignorant and knows better.

— Spoken by a character · Chapter XXXVI

The pitifulest thing out is a mob; that’s what an army is—a mob; they don’t fight with courage that’s born in them, but with courage that’s borrowed from their mass, and from their officers. But a mob without any man at the head of it is beneath pitifulness.

— Spoken by a character · Chapter XXII

It’s lovely to live on a raft. We had the sky up there, all speckled with stars, and we used to lay on our backs and look up at them, and discuss about whether they was made or only just happened.

“Well, that’s what I’m a-saying; all kings is mostly rapscallions, as fur as I can make out.”

— Spoken by a character · Chapter XXIII

Everybody loved to have him around, too; he was sunshine most always—I mean he made it seem like good weather.

The average man don’t like trouble and danger.

— Spoken by a character · Chapter XXII

I do not wish any reward but to know I have done the right thing.

I couldn’t bear to think about it; and yet, somehow, I couldn’t think about nothing else.

The world is made wrong; kings should go to school to their own laws, at times, and so learn mercy.

— Spoken by a character · XXVII. In Prison

“Rise, Sir Miles Hendon, Knight,” said the King, gravely--giving the accolade with Hendon’s sword--“rise, and seat thyself. Thy petition is granted. Whilst England remains, and the crown continues, the privilege shall not lapse.”

— the King · XII. The Prince and his Deliverer

I will keep this diligently in my remembrance, that this day’s lesson be not lost upon me, and my people suffer thereby; for learning softeneth the heart and breedeth gentleness and charity.

— Spoken by a character · IV. The Prince’s troubles begin

“Kings cannot ennoble thee, thou good, great soul, for One who is higher than kings hath done that for thee; but a king can confirm thy nobility to men.”

— Spoken by a character · XXVIII. The sacrifice

“What dost thou know of suffering and oppression? I and my people know, but not thou.”

— Spoken by a character · XXXIII. Edward as King

When I am king, they shall not have bread and shelter only, but also teachings out of books; for a full belly is little worth where the mind is starved, and the heart.

— Spoken by a character · IV. The Prince’s troubles begin

What God wills, will happen; thou canst not hurry it, thou canst not alter it; therefore wait, and be patient--‘twill be time enow to rail or rejoice when what is to happen has happened.” {1}

— Spoken by a character · XXIII. The Prince a prisoner

It does us all good to unbend sometimes.

By-and-by Tom’s reading and dreaming about princely life wrought such a strong effect upon him that he began to act the prince, unconsciously.

In the ancient city of London, on a certain autumn day in the second quarter of the sixteenth century, a boy was born to a poor family of the name of Canty, who did not want him. On the same day another English child was born to a rich family of the name of Tudor, who did want him.

The face of the water, in time, became a wonderful book--a book that was a dead language to the uneducated passenger, but which told its mind to me without reserve, delivering its most cherished secrets as clearly as if it uttered them with a voice. And it was not a book to be read once and thrown aside, for it had a new story to tell every day.

In the South, the war is what A.D. is elsewhere: they date from it.

One who knows the Mississippi will promptly aver--not aloud, but to himself--that ten thousand River Commissions, with the mines of the world at their back, cannot tame that lawless stream, cannot curb it or confine it, cannot say to it, Go here, or Go there, and make it obey; cannot save a shore which it has sentenced; cannot bar its path with an obstruction which it will not tear down, dance over, and laugh at.

The world and the books are so accustomed to use, and over-use, the word 'new' in connection with our country, that we early get and permanently retain the impression that there is nothing old about it.

When a circus came and went, it left us all burning to become clowns; the first negro minstrel show that came to our section left us all suffering to try that kind of life; now and then we had a hope that if we lived and were good, God would permit us to be pirates.

There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.

And, mind you, emotions are among the toughest things in the world to manufacture out of whole cloth; it is easier to manufacture seven facts than one emotion.

It always happens that when a man seizes upon a neglected and important idea, people inflamed with the same notion crop up all around.

Nobody could infer the master-mind in the top of that edifice from the edifice itself.

On this up trip I saw a little towhead (infant island) half a mile long, which had been formed during the past nineteen years.

The air up there in the clouds is very pure and fine, bracing and delicious. And why shouldn’t it be?—it is the same the angels breathe.

No Californian gentleman or lady ever abuses or oppresses a Chinaman, under any circumstances, an explanation that seems to be much needed in the East. Only the scum of the population do it—they and their children; they, and, naturally and consistently, the policemen and politicians, likewise, for these are the dust-licking pimps and slaves of the scum, there as well as elsewhere in America.

All men have heard of the Mormon Bible, but few except the “elect” have seen it, or, at least, taken the trouble to read it. I brought away a copy from Salt Lake. The book is a curiosity to me, it is such a pretentious affair, and yet so “slow,” so sleepy; such an insipid mess of inspiration. It is chloroform in print.

What I suffered in contemplating his happiness, pen cannot describe.

The poetry was all in the anticipation—there is none in the reality.

If the reader thinks he is done, now, and that this book has no moral to it, he is in error. The moral of it is this: If you are of any account, stay at home and make your way by faithful diligence; but if you are “no account,” go away from home, and then you will have to work, whether you want to or not.

I am not given to exaggeration, and when I say a thing I mean it.

It was that population that gave to California a name for getting up astounding enterprises and rushing them through with a magnificent dash and daring and a recklessness of cost or consequences, which she bears unto this day—and when she projects a new surprise, the grave world smiles as usual, and says “Well, that is California all over.”

I freighted a leaf with a mental message for the friends at home, and dropped it in the stream. But I put no stamp on it and it was held for postage somewhere.

Your breath comes short and quick, you are feverish with excitement; the dinner-bell may ring its clapper off, you pay no attention; friends may die, weddings transpire, houses burn down, they are nothing to you; you sweat and dig and delve with a frantic interest—and all at once you strike it!

Tom appeared on the sidewalk with a bucket of whitewash and a long-handled brush. He surveyed the fence, and all gladness left him and a deep melancholy settled down upon his spirit. Thirty yards of board fence nine feet high. Life to him seemed hollow, and existence but a burden.