100 Mark Twain Quotes – Cleverness Wisdom

From his pithy observations on human nature to cleverness take on life’s challenges, read on Mark Twain quotes to discover the pearls of wisdom.

Mark Twain, born Samuel Langhorne Clemens, was an American writer, humorist, and lecturer who lived in the 19th and early 20th centuries. He is renowned for his wit and wisdom, which he imparted through his writings and speeches.

His works have been widely read and admired for over a century, and his quotes remain popular to this day. To honor his insight, cleverness, and ability that capture the essence of the human condition, we gathered most inspiring Mark Twain quotes.

Whether he was discussing politics, human nature, or the absurdities of life, Mark had a gift for expressing his ideas in a way that was both profound and entertaining. In this way, Mark Twain quotes have become an enduring legacy, offering wisdom and inspiration for us in all ages and backgrounds.

Discover the quotes that have struck a chord with you, and share them with others. Let’s get started!

Famous Mark Twain quotes

Give every day the chance to become the most beautiful day of your life.
Mark Twain

If you don’t read the newspaper, you’re uninformed. If you read the newspaper, you’re mis–informed.
Mark Twain

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.
Mark Twain

You meet people who forget you. You forget people you meet. But sometimes you meet those people you can’t forget. Those are your ‘friends
Mark Twain

Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.
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

How easy it is to make people believe a lie, and [how] hard it is to undo that work again!
Mark Twain

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Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see.
Mark Twain

Life is short, Break the Rules. Forgive quickly, Kiss slowly. Love truly. Laugh uncontrollably And never regret anything that makes you smile.
Mark Twain

Never argue with stupid people, they will drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience.
Mark Twain

Motivational Mark Twain quotes

Find inspiration and motivation with the timeless words with ten Mark Twain quotes, a true literary icon.

Don’t dream your life, but live your dream.
Mark Twain

The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex overwhelming tasks into small manageable tasks, and starting on the first one.
Mark Twain

Never allow someone to be your priority while allowing yourself to be their option.
Mark Twain

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

Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear.
Mark Twain

Success is a journey, not a destination. It requires constant effort, vigilance and reevaluation.
Mark Twain

To be great, truly great, you have to be the kind of person who makes the others around you great.
Mark Twain

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Focus more on your desire than on your doubt, and the dream will take care of itself.
Mark Twain

If we were meant to talk more than listen, we would have two mouths and one ear.
Mark Twain

Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.
Mark Twain

Funny Mark Twain quotes

From humor to satire, explore the multifaceted genius through unforgettable Mark Twain quotes.

Worrying is like paying a debt you don’t owe.
Mark Twain

I didn’t attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it.
Mark Twain

If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.
Mark Twain

Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason.
Mark Twain

If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and man.
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

I don’t like to commit myself about heaven and hell – you see, I have friends in both places.
Mark Twain

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Do the right thing. It will gratify some people and astonish the rest.
Mark Twain

God created war so that Americans would learn geography.
Mark Twain

Suppose you were an idiot, and suppose you were a member of Congress; but I repeat myself.
Mark Twain

Witty Mark Twain quotes

The only way to keep your health is to eat what you don’t want, drink what you don’t like, and do what you’d rather not.
Mark Twain

Never let the truth get in the way of a good story.
Mark Twain

Of all God’s creatures, there is only one that cannot be made slave of the leash. That one is the cat. If man could be crossed with the cat it would improve the man, but it would deteriorate the cat.
Mark Twain

Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company.
Mark Twain

A banker is a fellow who lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining, but wants it back the minute it begins to rain.
Mark Twain

Sacred cows make the best hamburger.
Mark Twain

Why do you sit there looking like an envelope without any address on it?
Mark Twain

There are basically two types of people. People who accomplish things, and people who claim to have accomplished things. The first group is less crowded.
Mark Twain

Nothing spoils a good story like the arrival of an eyewitness.
Mark Twain

Censorship is telling a man he can’t have a steak just because a baby can’t chew it.
Mark Twain

Humorous Mark Twain quotes

Everyone is a moon, and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody.
Mark Twain

The trouble is not in dying for a friend, but in finding a friend worth dying for.
Mark Twain

Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint.
Mark Twain

Men are like bank accounts. The more money, the more interest they generate.
Mark Twain

We have the best government that money can buy.
Mark Twain

Behind every successful man, there is a woman – And behind every unsuccessful man, there are two.
Mark Twain

There are no grades of vanity; there are only grades of ability in concealing it.
Mark Twain

Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please.
Mark Twain

When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.
Mark Twain

Never put off till tomorrow what you can do day after tomorrow just as well.
Mark Twain

Mark Twain quotes about life

There was never yet an uninteresting life. Such a thing is an impossibility. Inside of the dullest exterior there is a drama, a comedy, and a tragedy.
Mark Twain

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

A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval. There is nothing more satisfying than that sense of being completely “at home” in your own skin. When you achieve that as a natural state of “being”, then you can finally look beyond yourself and fully contribute all your talents to the world.
Mark Twain

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

The ability to find solutions to life’s challenges is what makes us grow as a person.
Mark Twain

There is no security in life, only opportunity.
Mark Twain

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. When you are seeking to bring big plans to fruition it is important with whom you regularly associate. Hang out with friends who are like–minded and who are also designing purpose–filled lives. Similarly be that kind of a friend for your friends.
Mark Twain

No man’s life, liberty, or property are safe while the legislature is in session.
Mark Twain

The more I learn about people, the more I like my dog.
Mark Twain

Some of the worst things in my life never even happened.
Mark Twain

Mark Twain quotes about truth

The truth hurts, but silence kills.
Mark Twain

A little lie can travel half way ’round the world while Truth is still lacing up her boots.
Mark Twain

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

When in doubt tell the truth. It will confound your enemies and astound your friends.
Mark Twain

A half–truth is the most cowardly of lies.
Mark Twain

Never tell the truth to people who are not worthy of it.
Mark Twain

The history of our race, and each individual’s experience, are sown thick with evidence that a truth is not hard to kill and that a lie told well is immortal.
Mark Twain

When in doubt tell the truth.
Mark Twain

Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn’t.
Mark Twain

If you tell the truth you do not need a good memory!
Mark Twain

Mark Twain quotes about fools

The conviction of the rich that the poor are happier is no more foolish than the conviction of the poor that the rich are.
Mark Twain

If all the fools in this world should die, lordly God how lonely I should be.
Mark Twain

Man is without doubt the most interesting fool there is. He concedes that God made the angels immune from pain and death, and that he could have been similarly kind to man, but denies that he was under any moral obligation to do so.
Mark Twain

No amount of evidence will ever persuade an idiot.
Mark Twain

The first of April is the day we remember what we are the other 364 days of the year.
Mark Twain

Let us be thankful for the fools. But for them the rest of us could not succeed.
Mark Twain

I am a great and sublime fool. But then I am God’s fool, and all His works must be contemplated with respect.
Mark Twain

The trouble ain’t that there is too many fools, but that the lightning ain’t distributed right.
Mark Twain

Don’t wrestle with pigs. You both get dirty and the pig likes it.
Mark Twain

Never argue with a fool, onlookers may not be able to tell the difference.
Mark Twain

Mark Twain love quotes

Those that respect the law and love sausage should watch neither being made.
Mark Twain

Love heightens all senses – except the common.
Mark Twain

I simply can’t resist a cat, particularly a purring one. They are the cleanest, cunningest, and most intelligent things I know, outside of the girl you love, of course.
Mark Twain

Love is the irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired.
Mark Twain

What do we call love, hate, charity, revenge, humanity, forgiveness? Different results of the master impulse, the necessity of securing one’s self–approval.
Mark Twain

The best way to cheer yourself up is to try to cheer somebody else up.
Mark Twain

Love your enemy, it will scare the hell out of them.
Mark Twain

One of life’s most over–valued pleasures is sexual intercourse; of one of life’s least appreciated pleasures in defecation.
Mark Twain

If you want love and abundance in your life, give it away.
Mark Twain

Praise is well, compliment is well, but affection–that is the last and most precious reward that any man can win, whether by character or achievement.
Mark Twain

Mark Twain quotes about travel

Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow–mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts.
Mark Twain

Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.
Mark Twain

If you can’t stand solitude, perhaps others find you boring as well.
Mark Twain

I have found out that there ain’t no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than to travel with them.
Mark Twain

My own luck has been curious all my literary life; I never could tell a lie that anyone would doubt, nor a truth that anybody would believe.
Mark Twain

We love old travelers: we love to hear them prate, drivel and lie; we love them for their asinine vanity, their ability to bore, their luxuriant fertility of imagination, their startling, brilliant, overwhelming mendacity.
Mark Twain

There is no unhappiness like the misery of sighting land (and work) again after a cheerful, careless voyage.
Mark Twain

Take the universe as a whole, and it is a very clever conception and quite competently carried out, but I don’t think much of this globe as a work of art. It would have been better to take more time to it and do it right, it seems to me, than to rush it through, helter–skelter, in six days, just for reputation.
Mark Twain

I have found out there ain’t no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than to travel with them.
Mark Twain

It liberates the vandal to travel – you never saw a bigoted, opinionated, stubborn, narrow–minded, self–conceited, almighty mean man in your life but he had stuck in one place since he was born.
Mark Twain

Final thoughts

As we delve into the world of Mark Twain quotes, we are reminded of the enduring legacy of one of America’s greatest writers and thinkers. His unique ability to blend cleverness and insight in his writing has made his works timeless and enduring.

Mark Twain quotes also highlights and capture the essence of human nature, often exposing our foibles and weaknesses with a witty turn of phrase. His words have the power to make us think and contemplating… and to make us see the world in a different way. They are sure inspire and entertain people around the world today.

Hope that you have enjoyed this brief exploration of Mark Twain quotes. Whether you are familiar with his works or encountering them for the first time, his words have the power to resonate with us and inspire us to reflect on our own lives. Thanks for reading!