Top 100 Good Mark Twain Quotes
#1. He put his foot on it, and lifted one of the sleeves out with his teeth, and chewed and chewed at it, gradually taking it in, and all the while opening and closing his eyes in a kind of religious ecstasy, as if he had never tasted anything as good as an overcoat before, in his life.
Mark Twain
#2. Music is a good thing; and after all that soul-butter and hogwash, I never see it freshen up things so, and sound so honest and bully.
Mark Twain
#3. I hate editors, for they make me abandon a lot of perfectly good English words.
Mark Twain
#4. When we badly want a thing, we go to hunting for good and righteous reasons for it; we give it that fine name to comfort our consciences, whereas we privately know we are only hunting for plausible ones.
Mark Twain
#5. Half of the results of a good intentions are evil; half the results of an evil intention are good.
Mark Twain
#6. Mark Twain was so good with crowds that he became, in competition with singers and dancers and actors and acrobats, one of the most popular performers of his time. It is so unusual, and so psychologically unlikely, too, for a great writer to be a great performer, too ...
Kurt Vonnegut
#7. Diligence is a good thing, but taking things easy is much more restful.
Mark Twain
#8. It's a good thing for a dog to have fleas; keeps his mind off being a dog.
Mark Twain
#9. How lucky Adam was. He knew when he said a good thing, nobody had said it before.
Mark Twain
#11. Yes, take it all around, there is quite a good deal of information in the book. I regret this very much; but really it could not be helped.
-from the Prefatory
Mark Twain
#12. No temperance society which is well officered and which has the real good of our fellow-men in view, will ever get drunk save in the seclusion of its temperance hall.
Mark Twain
#13. There is nothing more frustrating than a good example.
Mark Twain
#14. I don't know anything that mars a good literature so completely as too much truth. Facts contain a great deal of poetry, but you can't use too many of them without damaging your literature.
Mark Twain
#15. In a good bookroom you feel in some mysterious way that you are absorbing the wisdom contained in all the books through your skin, without even opening them.
Mark Twain
#16. And whoever will take that motto and live by it will be likely to succeed. There's many a way to win, in this world, but none of them is worth much without good hard work back of it.
Mark Twain
#17. He was a good enough sort of cretur, and hadn't no harm in him, and was just a genius, as the papers said, which wasn't his fault.
Mark Twain
#18. The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them. MARK TWAIN
Guy Kawasaki
#19. Artemus Ward used that trick a good deal; then when the belated audience presently caught the joke he would look up with innocent surprise, as if wondering what they had found to laugh at. Dan Setchell used it before
Mark Twain
#20. How often we recall with regret that Napoleon once shot at a magazine editor and missed him and killed a publisher. But we remember with charity that his intentions were good.
Mark Twain
#21. To do good is noble. To tell others to do good is even nobler and much less trouble.
Mark Twain
#22. The good Lord didn't create anything without a purpose, but the fly comes close.
Mark Twain
#23. Now and then we had a hope that if we lived and were good, God would permit us to be pirates.
Mark Twain
#24. Spare the rod and spile the child, as the Good Book says. I'm a laying up sin and suffering for us both,
Mark Twain
#25. Such is luck! And such the treatment which honest, good perservance gets so often at the hands of unfair and malicious Nature!
Mark Twain
#26. A woman's intuition is better than a man's. Nobody knows anything, really, you know, and a woman can guess a good deal nearer than a man.
Mark Twain
#27. New Year's Day: Now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions. Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual.
Mark Twain
#28. Concentration of power in a political machine is bad; and and an Established Church is only a political machine; it was invented for that; it is nursed, cradled, preserved for that; it is an enemy to human liberty, and does no good which it could not better do in a split-up and scattered condition.
Mark Twain
#29. Trial by jury is the palladium of our liberties. I do not know what a palladium is, but I am sure it is a good thing!
Mark Twain
#30. The exquisitely bad is as satisfying to the soul as the exquisitely good. Only the mediocre is unendurable.
Mark Twain
#31. Mark Twain once said, I can live for two months on a good compliment.
Gary Chapman
#32. Epitaphs are cheap, and they do a poor chap a world of good after he is dead, especially if he had hard luck while he was alive. I wish they were used more.
Mark Twain
#33. Surely the test of a novel's characters is that you feel a strong interest in them and their affairs the good to be successful, the bad to suffer failure. Well, in John Ward, you feel no divided interest, no discriminating interest you want them all to land in hell together, and right away.
Mark Twain
#34. It does us all good to unbend sometimes.
Mark Twain
#35. A book I suggest to everybody is called, "Mysterious Stranger" by Mark Twain. It's about Satan and his visit here. A good book.
Richard Ramirez
#36. A wise man does not waste so good a commodity as lying for naught.
Mark Twain
#37. None of us can be as great as God, but any of us can be as good.
Mark Twain
#38. Warm summer sun,
shine brightly here,
Warm Southern wind,
blow softly here,
Green sod above,
lie light, lie light,
Good night, dear heart;
good night, good night.
Mark Twain
#39. She agreed with Mark Twain that golf was a good walk spoiled.
Jonathan Maberry
#40. All good things arrive unto them that wait - and don't die in the meantime.
Mark Twain
#41. It usually takes more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech. Overnight success is a fallacy. It is preceded by a great deal of preparation. Ask any successful person how they came to this point in their lives, and they will have a story to tell.
Mark Twain
#42. God puts something good and loveable in every man His hands create.
Mark Twain
#43. Good exercise for the heart: reach out and help your neighbor
Mark Twain
#44. It takes a heap of sense to write good nonsense
Mark Twain
#45. The fact is, the king was a good deal more than a king, he was a man; and when a man is a man, you can't knock it out of him.
Mark Twain
#46. The old Irish when immersing a babe at baptism left out the right arm so that it would remain pagan for good fighting
Mark Twain
#47. In other localities certain places in the streams are much better than others, but at Niagara one place is just as good as another, for the reason that the fish do not bite anywhere.
Mark Twain
#48. If books are not good company, where shall I find it?
Mark Twain
#49. My! we couldn't get him out, Tom. And besides, 'twouldn't do any good; they'd ketch him again." "Yes - so they would. But I hate to hear 'em abuse him so like the dickens when he never done - that." "I do too, Tom. Lord, I hear 'em say he's the
Mark Twain
#50. I 'uz mos' to de foot er de islan' b'fo' I found' a good place. I went into de woods en jedged I wouldn' fool wid raffs no mo', long as dey move de lantern roun' so. I had my pipe en a plug er dog-leg, en some matches in my cap, en dey warn't wet, so I 'uz all right.
Mark Twain
#51. It's not the good that die young, it's the lucky.
Mark Twain
#52. What a good thing Adam had. When he said a good thing he knew nobody had said it before.
Mark Twain
#53. I like a good story well told. That is the reason I am sometimes forced to tell them myself.
Mark Twain
#54. In 'Huckleberry Finn,' I have drawn Tom Blankenship exactly as he was. He was ignorant, unwashed, insufficiently fed; but he had as good a heart as ever any boy had.
Mark Twain
#55. Manners!" he said. "Why, it is merely the truth, and truth is good manners; manners are a fiction. The castle is done. Do you like it?
Mark Twain
#56. I can last two months on a good compliment.
Mark Twain
#57. Mark Twain was very unhappy with himself for various reasons. He was very unhappy with America of this time. He thought it was terrible we had no anti-lynching laws, and he was also a feminist, and he was also very concerned with anti-Semitism. He was a good man, but he was hard on himself.
Joyce Carol Oates
#58. If I had the remaking of man, he wouldn't have any conscience. It is one of the most disagreeable things connected with a person; and although it certainly does a great deal of good, it cannot be said to pay, in the long run; it would be much better to have less good and more comfort.
Mark Twain
#59. Prophecy is a good line of business, but it is full of risks.
Mark Twain
#60. No man has an appreciation so various that his judgment is good upon all varieties of literary work.
Mark Twain
#61. 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. My child, I can live on a good compliment two weeks with nothing else to eat.
Mark Twain
#62. I was warned to stop smoking, which I did, for two or three days, but it was too lonesome, and I have resumed - in a modified way - 4 smokes a day instead of 40. This will have a good effect. On the bank balance.
Mark Twain
#63. Mark Twain said that Adam was the only man who, when he said a good thing, knew that nobody had said it before.
Anne Lamott
#64. 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.
Mark Twain
#65. A good memory and a tongue tied in the middle is a combination which gives immortality to conversation.
Mark Twain
#66. An enemy can partly ruin a man, but it takes a good-natured injudicious friend to complete the thing and make it perfect.
Mark Twain
#67. [Mark Twain] is still the rough, awkward, good-natured boy who swore at the deck hands when he was three years old. Thoroughly likeable as a good fellow, but impossible as a man of letters.
Willa Cather
#68. The test of any good fiction is that you should care something for the characters; the good to succeed, the bad to fail. The trouble with most fiction is that you want them all to land in hell together, as quickly as possible.
Mark Twain
#69. It is my belief that nearly any invented quotation, played with confidence, stands a good chance to deceive.
Mark Twain
#70. There is nothing so annoying as a good example!!
Mark Twain
#71. Thunder is good, thunder is impressive; but it is lightning that does the work.
Mark Twain
#72. What's your name?"
"Becky Thatcher. What's yours? Oh, I know. It's Thomas Sawyer."
"That's the name they lick me by. I'm Tom when I'm good. You call me Tom, will you?"
"Yes
Mark Twain
#73. we consulted the guide-books and were rejoiced to know that there were no sights in Odessa to see; and so we had one good, untrammeled holyday on our hands, with nothing to do but idle about the city and enjoy ourselves.
Mark Twain
#74. I felt very good; I judged I had done it pretty neat
I reckoned Tom Sawyer couldn't a done it no neater himself. Of course he would a throwed more style into it, but I can't do that very handy, not being brung up with it.
Mark Twain
#75. It takes three weeks to prepare a good ad-lib speech.
Mark Twain
#76. A good lawyer knows the law; a clever one takes the judge to lunch.
Mark Twain
#77. During the gold rush its a good time to be in the pick and shovel business
Mark Twain
#78. It is full of interest, it has noble poetry in it and some clever fables and some blood drenched history, some good morals and a wealth of obscenity and upwards of a thousand lies.
(Re The Bible)
Mark Twain
#80. It is a good thing to write for the amusement of the public, but it is a far higher and nobler thing to write for their instruction, their profit, their actual and tangible benefit.
Mark Twain
#81. The Bible has noble poetry in it ... and some good morals and a wealth of obscenity, and upwards of a thousand lies.
Mark Twain
#82. The law is a system that protects everybody who can afford to hire a good lawyer.
Mark Twain
#83. I saw men whom thirty years had changed but slightly; but their wives had grown old. These were good women; it is very wearing to be good.
Mark Twain
#84. This is Huck Finn, a child of mine of shady reputation. Be good to him for his parent's sake.
Mark Twain
#85. Just the omission of Jane Austen's books alone would make a fairly good library out of a library that hadn't a book in it.
Mark Twain
#86. We have not all had the good fortune to be ladies. We have not all been generals, or poets, or statesmen; but when the toast works down to the babies, we stand on common ground - for we have all been babies.
Mark Twain
#87. A good legible label is usually worth, for information, a ton of significant attitude and expression in a historical picture.
Mark Twain
#88. All the memories in the world, good or bad, are not worth one slender hope for the future; and
Mark Twain
#89. A monarch, when good, is entitled to the consideration which we accord to a pirate who keeps Sunday School between crimes; when bad, he is entitled to none at all.
Mark Twain
#90. A country without a patent office and good patent laws is just a crab, and can't travel any way but sideways and backways.
Mark Twain
#91. Not a sparrow falls to the ground without His seeing it." "But it falls, just the same. What good is seeing it fall?
Mark Twain
#92. Good wine needs no bush; a jug is the thing.
Mark Twain
#93. The catfish is Plenty good enough fish for anyone
Mark Twain
#94. Stars and shadows ain't good to see by.
Mark Twain
#95. Nothing spoils a good story like the arrival of an eyewitness.
Mark Twain
#96. There are several good protections against temptations, but the surest is cowardice.
Mark Twain
#97. I am not the editor of a newspaper and shall always try to do right and be good so that God will not make me one.
Mark Twain
#98. It was a place of sin, loose women, whiskey and gambling. It was no place for a good Presbyterian, and I did not long remain one.
Mark Twain
#100. One ought always to lie, when one can do good by it;
Mark Twain
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