…is approval the proper word? I find it is the one I most value here in the household, & seldomest get. — Mark Twain, Letter to W.D. Howells, May 6-7, 1880

A certain amount of pride always goes along with a teaspoonful of brains, and…this pride protects a man from deliberately stealing other people’s ideas. That is what a teaspoonful of brains will do for a man – and admirers have often told me I had nearly a basketful – though they were rather reserved as to the size of the basket. — Mark Twain, Speech in Boston, December 3, 1879

A change of air and scene invigorates infallibly all but the dead, and ‘livens them up, too, I suppose, if they land in the wrong end of the here-after. — Mark Twain, Letter to Pamela A. Moffett, December 2, 1882

A man’s brain (intellect) is stored powder; it cannot touch itself off; the fire must come from outside. — Mark Twain, Mark Twain’s Notebook

A man’s first duty is to his own conscience & honor – the party & the country come second to that, & never first. — Mark Twain, Letter to W. D. Howells, September 17, 1884

A mere verbal contract…is the weakest of all weak weapons. If you had only come sooner I could have given you priceless advice, viz., – Never make a verbal contract with any man. — Mark Twain, Letter to Charles H. Webb, April 8, 1875

A sincere compliment is always grateful to a lady, so long as you don’t try to knock her down with it. — Mark Twain, “Answers to Correspondents,” Early Tales & Sketches, Volume 2, 1864-1865

A successful book is not made of what is in it, but of what is left out of it. — Mark Twain, Letter to H. H. Rogers, April 26-28, 1897

Age is not determined by years, but by trouble and infirmities of mind and body… — Mark Twain, Speech in Boston, December 3, 1879

All crimes should be punished with humiliations – life-long public exposure in ridiculous & groteque situation – & never in any other way. Death/Gallows makes a hero of the villain, & he is envied by some spectators & by & by imitated. — Mark Twain, Mark Twain’s Notebooks & Journals, Volume 3: 1883-1891

An author values a compliment even when it comes from a source of doubtful competency. — Mark Twain, Mark Twain in Eruption: Hitherto Unpublished Pages About Men and Events

An occasional compliment is necessary, to keep up one’s self-respect. … When you cannot get a compliment in any other way, pay yourself one. — Mark Twain, Mark Twain’s Notebook

An uneasy conscience is a hair in the mouth. — Mark Twain’s Notebook, Mark Twain

Apparently no narrative that tells the facts of a man’s life in the man’s own words, can be uninteresting. — Mark Twain, Letter to Olivia Clemens, July 26, 1887

Architects cannot teach nature anything. — Mark Twain, “A Memorable Midnight Experience,” Europe and Elsewhere

As for black clothes, my aversion for them is incurable. — Mark Twain, Letter to Frances Nunnally, March 28, 1909

Assassination of a crowned head whenever & wherever opportunity offers, should be the first article of all subjects’ religion. — Mark Twain, Mark Twain’s Notebooks & Journals, Volume 3: 1883-1891

Before seventy we are merely respected, at best, and we have to behave all the time, or we lose that asset; but after seventy we are respected, esteemed, admired, revered, and don’t have to behave unless we want to. When I first knew you, Honored Sir, one of us was hardly even respected. — Mark Twain, Telegram to British prime minister Henry Campbell-Bannerman on the latter’s seventieth birthday, August 27, 1906

Biographies are but the clothes and buttons of the man – the biography of the man himself cannot be written. — Mark Twain, Mark Twain’s Autobiography

Christianity will doubtless still survive in the earth ten centuries hence – stuffed & in a museum. — Mark Twain, Mark Twain’s Notebook

Church bells are usually hateful things… — Mark Twain, Mark Twain’s Notebooks & Journals, Volume 2: 1877-1883

Circumstances make men, not men circumstances. — Mark Twain, Mark Twain’s Notebook

Compliments make me vain: & when I am vain, I am insolent & overbearing. It is a pity too, because I love compliments. I love them even when they are not so. … I can live on a good compliment two weeks with nothing else to eat. — Mark Twain, Letter to Gertrude Natkin, March 2, 1906

Diligence is a good thing, but taking things easy is much more – restful. My idea is that the employer should be the busy man and the employee the idle one. The employer should be the worried man, and the employee the happy one. — Mark Twain, Speech in New York City, March 30, 1901

Do not offer a compliment & ask a favor at the same time. A comp[liment] that is charged for is not valuable. — Mark Twain, Mark Twain’s Notebook

Each man is afraid of his neighbor’s disapproval – a thing which, to the general run of the human race, is more dreaded than wounds and death. — Mark Twain, “The United States of Lyncherdom,” Europe and Elsewhere

For two years past I have been planning my funeral, but I have changed my mind and have postponed it. — Mark Twain, Interview in New York Times, July 13, 1907

Good breeding consists in concealing how much we think of ourselves & how little we think of the other person. — Mark Twain, Mark Twain’s Notebook

Great books are weighed and measured by their style and matter, and not by the trimmings and shadings of their grammar. — Mark Twain, Mark Twain: A Biography

Hell is peopled with honester men than California — Mark Twain, Letter to Orion and Mollie Clemens, October 21, 1862

I am the only literary animal of my particular sub-species who has ever been given a degree by any College in any age of the world, as far as I know. — Mark Twain, Letter to Charles H. Clarke, July 2, 1888

I could read his [Poe's] prose on salary, but not Jane’s. Jane is entirely impossible. It seems a great pity that they allowed her to die a natural death. — Mark Twain, Letter to W. D. Howells, January 18, 1909

I don’t value the commendations of critics at as high a rate as I value the commendations of personal friends – for these latter are naturally in a state of solicitude and anxiety, and this makes them ever so much harder to please or move than the indifferent and disinterested stranger. — Mark Twain, Letter to H. H. Rogers, April 29, 1895

I had rather discharge a perilous & unsound cannon than the soundest servant girl that ever was. — Mark Twain, Letter to in-laws, April 16, 1870

I have achieved my seventy years in the usual way: by sticking strictly to a scheme of life which would kill anybody else. It sounds like an exaggeration, but that is really the common rule for attaining old age. — Mark Twain, 70th birthday speech in New York City, December 5, 1905

I have been an author for 20 years & an ass for 55. — Mark Twain, Fragment of letter to unnamed correspondent, after February 1891

I have made it a rule never to smoke more than one cigar at a time. I have no other restriction as regards to smoking. — Mark Twain, Speech in New York City, December 5, 1905

I have often wondered, myself, when reading critiques in the papers, what would become of an actor if he tried to follow all the fearfully conflicting advice they contained. — Mark Twain, “Answers to Correspondents,” Early Tales & Sketches, Volume 2, 1864-1865

I have tried in even one single little instance, to help cultivate the cultivated classes. I was not equipped for it, either by native gifts or training. And I never had any ambition in that direction, but always hunted for bigger game – the masses. I have seldom deliberately tried to instruct them, but have done my best to entertain them. — Mark Twain, Letter to Andrew Lang, c. 1890

I hear the newspapers say I am dying. The charge is not true. I would not do such a thing at my time of life. I am behaving as good as I can. — Mark Twain, Letter to Associated Press, December 24, 1909

I intend that this autobiography shall become a model for all future autobiographies when it is published, after my death, and I also intend that it shall be read and admired a good many centuries because of its form and method – a form and method whereby the past and the present are constantly brought face to face, resulting in contrasts which newly fire up the interest of all along, like contact of flint with steel. — Mark Twain, North American Review, September 7, 1906

I knew the audiences would come forward & shake hands with you – that one infallible sign of sincere approval. In all my life, wherever it failed me I left the hall sick & ashamed, knowing what it meant. — Mark Twain, Letter to W. D. Howells, January 25, 1900

I know a good deal more than a boiled carrot, though I may not appear to. — Mark Twain, Letter to Bishop Francis Lister Hawks, March 1865

I know all about audiences. They believe everything you say – except when you are telling the truth. — Mark Twain, Letter to New York Times, April 15, 1906

I like criticism, but it must be my way. — Mark Twain, North American Review, September 7, 1906

I like that word “accident,” although it is…absolutely destitute of meaning. I like it because it is short and handy and because it answers so well and so conveniently, and so briefly, in designating happenings which we should otherwise have to describe as odd, curious, interesting, and so on. — Mark Twain, Mark Twain in Eruption: Hitherto Unpublished Pages About Men and Events

I never had but two powerful ambitions in my life. One was to be a pilot, & the other a preacher of the gospel. I accomplished the one & failed in the other, because I could not supply myself with the necessary stock in trade – i.e. religion. I have given it up forever. I never had a “call” in that direction, anyhow, & my aspirations were the very ecstasy of presumption. — Mark Twain, Letter to Orion and Mollie Clemens, October 19-20, 1865

I think a compliment ought always to precede a complaint, where one is possible, because it softens resentment and insures for the complaint a courteous & gentle reception. — Mark Twain, Letter to president of Western Union, August 1902

I think that there is but a single specialty with us, only one thing that can be called by the wide name “American.” That is the national devotion to ice-water. — Mark Twain, “What Paul Bourget Thinks of Us,” Collected Tales, Sketches, Speeches, & Essays, 1891-1910

I think they have sent agents far and near and drummed up all the worthless barbers in the world and set them up in New York. I believe they sharpen their razors on the curbstone. They snatch all the beard out of your face in about two minutes, swab your jaws a little with a damp rag, put a microscopic drop of oil on your hair, give it one rub forward, another backward, and a third sideways, stack it up in a ragged pile on top of your head like a Street Commissioner’s monument, and let you go. And you go, hoping your beard will never grow again. — Mark Twain, Letter to the San Francisco Alta California, February 23, 1867

I understand good art to be, that way of representing a thing on canvas wh[ich] shall be farthest from resembling anything in heaven or on earth or in the waters under the earth.
In good art, a correct complexion is the color of a lobster, or of a bleached tripe or of a chimney sweep – there are no intermediates or modifications. — Mark Twain, Mark Twain’s Notebooks & Journals, Volume 2: 1877-1883

If books are not good company, where will I find it? — Mark Twain, Letter to mother, August 31, 1853

If Christ was God, then the crucifixion is without dignity, it is merely ridiculous. For to endure several hours’ pain is nothing heroic in a God in any case… — Mark Twain, Mark Twain’s Notebook

If Christ were here now, there is one thing he would not be – A Christian. — Mark Twain, Mark Twain’s Notebook

If one’s autobiography may be called a book – in fact mine will be nearer a library. — Mark Twain, Letter to Mary Fairbanks, November 16, 1886

In a century we have produced two hundred and twenty thousand books; not a bathtub-full of them are still alive and marketable. — Mark Twain, Mark Twain in Eruption: Hitherto Unpublished Pages About Men and Events

In my experience, previously counted chickens never do hatch. How many of mine I have counted! – & never a one of them but failed! It is much better to hedge disappointment by not counting. Unexpected money is a delight. The same sum is a bitterness when you expected more. — Mark Twain, Letter to Orion Clemens, March 23, 1878

In the sweet and unvexed spiritual atmosphere of the Bermudas one does not achieve gray hairs at forty-eight. — Mark Twain, North American Review, August 2, 1907

In this Autobiography I shall keep in mind the fact that I am speaking from the grave. I am literally speaking from the grave, because I shall be dead when the book issues from the press. I speak from the grave rather than with my living tongue, for a good reason: I can speak thence freely. — Mark Twain, Mark Twain’s Autobiography

Is anybody brave when he has no audience? — Mark Twain, Mark Twain’s Notebooks & Journals, Volume 2: 1877-1883

It is a solemn thought: Dead, the noblest man’s meat is inferior to pork. — Mark Twain, More Maxims of Mark

It is a wise child that knows its own father, and an unusual one that unreservedly approves of him. — Mark Twain, More Maxims of Mark

It is curious – curious that physical courage should be so common in the world, and moral courage so rare. — Mark Twain, Mark Twain in Eruption: Hitherto Unpublished Pages About Men and Events

It is only circumstance & environment that make burglars, therefore anybody is liable to be one. I don’t quite know how I have managed to escape myself. — Mark Twain, Letter to Marjorie Breckenridge, December 1, 1908

It is the sudden changes – in principles, morals, religions, fashions, and tastes – that have the best chance of winning in our day. — Mark Twain, Article in Harper’s Weekly, April 7, 1906

Leave your dog outside. Heaven goes by favor. If it went by merit you would stay out and the dog would go in. — Mark Twain, Mark Twain: A Biography

My axiom is, to succeed in business: avoid my example. — Mark Twain, Speech in New York City, March 30, 1901

My books are water; those of the great geniuses is wine. Everybody drinks water. — Mark Twain, Mark Twain’s Notebooks & Journals, Volume 3: 1883-1891

Name the greatest of all the inventors. Accident. — Mark Twain, Mark Twain’s Notebook

Never refuse to do a kindness unless the act would work great injury to yourself, & never refuse to take a drink – under any circumstances. — Mark Twain, Mark Twain’s Notebooks & Journals, Volume 1: 1855-1873

Next to a wife whom I idolise, give me a cat – an old cat, with kittens. — Mark Twain, Letter to Olivia Clemens, April 26, 1873

None but a lunatic would separate himself from his baggage. — Mark Twain, Letter to Pamela A. Moffett, October 9, 1889

None but an ass pays a compliment & asks a favor at the same time. There are many asses. — Mark Twain, Mark Twain Papers

Nothing incites to money-crimes like great poverty or great wealth. — Mark Twain, More Maxims of Mark

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

One must keep up one’s character. Earn a character first if you can, and if you can’t, then assume one. — Mark Twain, Speech in New York City, December 22, 1907

Only one thing is impossible with God: to find any sense in any copyright law on the planet. — Mark Twain, Mark Twain’s Notebook

Perhaps no bread in the world is quite as good as Southern corn bread, and perhaps no bread in the world is quite so bad as the Northern imitation of it. — Mark Twain, North American Review, March 1, 1907

Perhaps no important American or English statutes are uncompromisingly and hopelessly idiotic except the copyright statutes of these two countries. — Mark Twain, Mark Twain in Eruption: Hitherto Unpublished Pages About Men and Events

Plain clarity is better than ornate obscurity — Mark Twain, 1900 Draft letter to unnamed editor

Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself. — Mark Twain, Draft Manuscript, quoted in Mark Twain: A Biography

Shut the door. Not that it lets in the cold, but that it lets out the cosiness. — Mark Twain, Mark Twain’s Notebook

Some of us cannot be optimists, but all of us can be bigamists. — Mark Twain, More Maxims of Mark

Spending one’s capital is feeding a dog on his own tail. — Mark Twain, Mark Twain’s Notebook

The altar-cloth of one aeon is the door-mat of the next — Mark Twain, Mark Twain’s Notebook

The American characteristic is Uncourteousness. We are the Impolite Nation. In this detail we stand miles & miles above or below or beyond any other nation, savage or civilized. — Mark Twain, Mark Twain’s Notebook

The best way to cheer yourself up is to try to cheer somebody else up. — Mark Twain, Mark Twain’s Notebook

The burnt child shuns the fire. Until next day. — Mark Twain, More Maxims of Mark

The dog is a gentleman; I hope to go to his heaven, not man’s. — Mark Twain, Letter to W. D. Howells, April 2-13, 1899

The game of billiards has destroyed my naturally sweet disposition. — Mark Twain, Speech in New York City, April 24, 1906

The greatest of all the arts is to write a drama. It is a most difficult thing. It requires the highest talent possible and the rarest gifts. No, there is another talent that ranks with it – for anybody can write a drama – I had 499 of them – but to get one accepted requires real ability. And I have never had that felicity yet. — Mark Twain, Speech in London, June 9, 1900

The happy phrasing of a compliment is one of the rarest of human gifts, and the happy delivery of it another. — Mark Twain, North American Review, March 15, 1907

The human race is a race of cowards; and I am not only marching in that procession but carrying a banner. — Mark Twain, Mark Twain in Eruption: Hitherto Unpublished Pages About Men and Events

The law dresses a convict in a garb which makes him easily distinguishable from any moving thing in the world at a hundred and twenty-five yards, except a zebra. — Mark Twain, Letter to Harper’s Weekly, October 18, 1905

The one evidence of high civilization must surely be to not lie. — Mark Twain, Mark Twain’s Notebooks & Journals, Volume 2: 1877-1883

The very point in a picture that fascinates me with its beauty, is to the cultured artist a monstrous crime against the laws of coloring; and the very flush that charms me in a lovely face, is, to the critical surgeon, nothing but a sign hung out to advertise a decaying lung. Accursed be all such knowledge. I want none of it. — Mark Twain, Letter to the San Francisco Alta California, May 28, 1867

The whole scheme of things is turned wrong end to. Life should begin with age & its privileges and accumulations, & end with youth & its capacity to splendidly enjoy such advantages. As things are now, when in youth a dollar would bring a hundred pleasures, you can’t have it. When you are old, you get it & there is nothing worth buying with it then. It’s an epitome of life. The first half of it consists of the capacity to enjoy without the chance; the last half consists of the chance without the capacity. — Mark Twain, Letter to Edward L. Dimmitt, July 19, 1901

The world loses a good deal by the laws of decorum; gains a good deal, of course, but certainly loses a good deal. — Mark Twain, Mark Twain in Eruption: Hitherto Unpublished Pages About Men and Events

There are only two forces that can carry light to all corners of the globe – only two – the sun in the heavens and the Associated Press down here. — Mark Twain, Speech in New York City, September 19, 1906

There has been only one [Christia]n. They caught him & crucified him – early. — Mark Twain, Mark Twain’s Notebook

There is nothing that makes me prouder than to be regarded by intelligent people as “authentic.” A name I have coveted so long – & secured at last! I don’t care anything about being humorous, or poetical, or eloquent, or anything of that kind – the end & aim of my ambition is to be authentic – is to be considered authentic. — Mark Twain, Letter to Mary Fairbanks, February 20, 1868

There isn’t a single human characteristic that can be safely labeled “American.” There isn’t a single human ambition, or religious trend, or drift of thought, or peculiarity of education, or code of principles, or breed of folly, or style of conversation, or preference for a particular subject for discussion, or form of legs or trunk or head or face or expression or complexion, or gait, or dress, or manners, or disposition, or any other human detail, inside or outside, that can rationally be generalized as “American.” — Mark Twain, “What Paul Bourget Thinks of Us,” Collected Tales, Sketches, Speeches, & Essays, 1891-1910

Through manifold experiences I have learned that no courage is absolutely perfect; that there is always some one who is able to modify his pluck. — Mark Twain, Mark Twain’s Autobiography

To be busy is a man’s only happiness – & I am – otherwise I should die. — Mark Twain, Letter to Orion Clemens, February 21, 1868

U.S. copyright laws are far & away the most idiotic that exist anywhere on the face of the earth… — Mark Twain, Letter to H. C. Christiancy, September 18, 1887

We are by long odds the most ill-mannered nation, civilized or savage, that exists on the planet today. — Mark Twain, Mark Twain in Eruption: Hitherto Unpublished Pages About Men and Events

We can’t reach old age by another man’s road. My habits protect my life, but they would assassinate you. — Mark Twain, 70th birthday speech in New York City, December 5, 1905

We have to be despised by somebody whom we regard as above us, or we are not happy; we have to have somebody to worship and envy, or we cannot be content. In America we manifest this in all the ancient and customary ways. In public we scoff at titles and hereditary privilege, but privately we hanker after them, and when we get a chance we buy them for cash and a daughter. — Mark Twain, North American Review, January 4, 1907

What a boy or a youth longs for more than for any other thing. He would be a clown in a circus, he would be a pirate, he would sell himself to Satan, in order to attract attention and be talked about and envied. True, it is the same with every grown-up person. — Mark Twain, Mark Twain in Eruption: Hitherto Unpublished Pages About Men and Events

What a curious thing a “detective” story is. And was there ever one that the author needn’t be ashamed of, except the “Murders in the Rue Morgue”? — Mark Twain, Mark Twain’s Notebook

What a fool Adam was. Had everything his own way; had succeeded in gaining the love of the best looking girl in the neighborhood, but yet unsatisfied with his conquest he had to eat a miserable little apple. — Mark Twain, Letter to John T. Moore, July 6, 1859

What is ambition? It is only the desire to be conspicuous. The desire for fame is only the desire to be continuously conspicuous and attract attention and be talked about. — Mark Twain, North American Review, April 5, 1907

What is biography? Unadorned romance. What is romance? Adorned biography. Adorn it less & it will be better than it is. — Mark Twain, Mark Twain’s Notebooks & Journals, Volume 3: 1883-1891

What ought to be done to the man who invented the celebrating of anniversaries? Mere killing would be too light. — Mark Twain, Mark Twain’s Notebook

When an audience do not complain, it is a compliment, & when they do it is a compliment, too, if unaccompanied by violence. — Mark Twain, Letter to G. W. Cable, January 15, 1883

When one reads Bibles one is less surprised at what the Deity knows than at what He doesn’t know. — Mark Twain, Mark Twain’s Notebook

Wisdom teaches us that none but birds should go out early, and that not even birds should do it unless they are out of worms. — Mark Twain, Letter to Territorial Enterprise, January 1866

You are a coward when you even seem to have backed down from a thing you openly set out to do. — Mark Twain, Mark Twain’s Notebooks & Journals, Volume 2: 1877-1883

You must not pay a person a compliment & then straight way follow it with a criticism. — Mark Twain, Mark Twain’s Notebook

You ought never to have any part of the audience behind you; you never can tell what they are going to do. — Mark Twain, Speech in New York City, April 18, 1908