Top 78 Truth Twain Quotes
#1. The truth hurts, but silence kills.
Mark Twain
#2. That's just the way: a person does a low-down thing, and then he don't want to take no consequences of it. Thinks as long as he can hide it, it ain't no disgrace.
Mark Twain
#3. We never read the full explanatory surroundings of marvelously exciting things when we have no occasion to suppose that some irresponsible scribbler is trying to defraud us; we skip all that, and hasten to revel in the blood-curdling particulars and be happy.
Mark Twain
#4. A half-truth is the most cowardly of lies.
Mark Twain
#5. When it comes to bending the truth to assist a story's plot versus staying completely true to the facts, we can assure you any dramatist will always select the former. Mark Twain's old saying "Never let the truth get in the way of a good story" still reigns in Hollywood.
James Morcan
#6. If you tell the truth you do not need a good memory!
Mark Twain
#7. Look at the mother of Washington! She raised a boy that could not tell a lie
could not tell a lie! But he never had any chance. It might have been different if he had belonged to the Washington Newspaper Correspondents' Club
Mark Twain
#9. I don't mind what the opposition say of me so long as they don't tell the truth about me. But when they descend to telling the truth about me I consider that this is taking an unfair advantage.
Mark Twain
#10. A lie can make it half way around the world before the truth has time to put its boots on.
Mark Twain
#11. I have too much respect for the truth to drag it out on every trifling occasion.
Mark Twain
#12. An awkward, unscientific lie is often as ineffectual as the truth.
Mark Twain
#13. Those who say truth is stranger than fiction have wasted their time on poorly written fiction.
Mark Twain
#15. If a cat sits on a hot stove, that cat won't sit on a hot stove again. That cat won't sit on a cold stove either. That cat just don't like stoves.
Mark Twain
#16. The Bible has noble poetry in it ... and some good morals and a wealth of obscenity, and upwards of a thousand lies.
Mark Twain
#17. Always tell the truth; then you don't have to remember anything
Mark Twain
#18. The man who speaks an injurious truth lest his soul be not saved if he do otherwise, should reflect that that sort of a soul is not strictly worth saving. The
Mark Twain
#19. Tell the truth or trump-but get the trick.
Mark Twain
#20. Familiarity breeds contempt. How accurate that is. The reason we hold truth in such respect is because we have so little opportunity to get familiar with it.
Mark Twain
#21. I could see he meant no offense, but in my thoughts I set it down as not very good manners.
"Manners!" he said. "Why, it is merely the truth, and truth is good manners; manners are a fiction.
Mark Twain
#22. All of us contain Music & Truth, but most of us can't get it out.
Mark Twain
#23. Truth is such a precious article - let us all economize in its use.
Mark Twain
#24. The truth is a fragile thing, but a lie, well told, can live forever. " - Mark Twain
Rebecca Nugent
#25. There are three types of lies
lies, damn lies, and statistics.
Benjamin Disraeli
#26. An injurious truth has no merit over an injurious lie. Neither should ever be uttered. The man who speaks an injurious truth, lest his soul be not saved if he do otherwise, should reflect that that sort of a soul is not strictly worth saving.
Mark Twain
#27. Children and fools always speak the truth.
Mark Twain
#28. It is not worth while to strain one's self to tell the truth to people who habitually discount everything you tell them, whether it is true or isn't.
Mark Twain
#29. I like the truth sometimes, but I don't care enough for it to hanker after it.
Mark Twain
#30. Truth is the most valuable thing we have. Let us economize it.
Mark Twain
#31. When ill luck begins, it does not come in sprinkles, but in showers.
Mark Twain
#32. The truth is a precious commodity. That's why I use it so sparingly.
Mark Twain
#33. There was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth.
Mark Twain
#34. Among other common lies, we have the _silent_ lie
the deception which one conveys by simply keeping still and concealing the truth. Many obstinate truth-mongers indulge in this dissipation, imagining that if they _speak_ no lie, they lie not at all.
Mark Twain
#35. In truth I care little about any party's politics-the man behind it is the important thing.
Mark Twain
#36. A little lie can travel half way 'round the world while Truth is still lacing up her boots.
Mark Twain
#37. A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.
Mark Twain
#38. Humor is the good natured side of a truth.
Mark Twain
#39. Mark Twain.
The truth should never be permitted to stand in the way of a good story.
Mark Twain
#40. 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
#41. Now let us see what the philosophers say. Note that venerable proverb: Children and fools _always_ speak the truth. The deduction is plain
adults and wise persons _never_ speak it.
Mark Twain
#42. But it was ever thus, all through my life: whenever I have diverged from custom and principle and uttered a truth, the rule has been that the hearer hadn't strength of mind enough to believe it.
Mark Twain
#43. I know all about audiences, they believe everything you say, except when you are telling the truth.
Mark Twain
#44. A wise man does not waste so good a commodity as lying for naught.
Mark Twain
#45. A historian who would convey the truth must lie. Often he must enlarge the truth by diameters, otherwise his reader would not be able to see it.
Mark Twain
#46. When in doubt tell the truth. It will confound your enemies and astound your friends.
Mark Twain
#47. History is strewn thick with evidence that a truth is not hard to kill, but a lie, well told, is immortal.
Mark Twain
#48. A man is never more truthful than when he acknowledges himself a liar.
Mark Twain
#49. Truth is neither alive nor dead; it just aggravates itself all the time ...
Mark Twain
#50. To avoid being drawn into error, keep a firm grip on the truth.
Mark Twain
#51. If you play Mark Twain and he's not funny, you are definitely not playing Mark Twain. That was the biggest challenge, in some ways. Writing and performing jokes that can come out of that brilliant delivery system he constructed: the friendly, avuncular truth-teller.
Val Kilmer
#52. The truth is, a person's memory has no more sense that his conscience, and no appreciation whatever of values and proportions.
Mark Twain
#53. 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
#54. I have not professionally dealt in truth. Many when they come to die have spent all the truth that was in them, and enter the next world as paupers. I have saved up enough to make an astonishment there.
Mark Twain
#55. Life would be infinitely happier if we could only be born at the age of eighty and gradually approach eighteen.
Mark Twain
#56. All democrats are insane, but not one of them knows it
Mark Twain
#57. This nation is like all the others that have been spewed upon the earth
ready to shout for any cause that will tickle its vanity or fill its pocket. What a hell of a heaven it will be when they get all these hypocrites assembled there!
- Letter to J. H. Twichell, 1/29/1901
Mark Twain
#58. 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
#59. If I can capture truth in its simplest form, beauty will follow like a sledgehammer.
Mark Twain
#60. Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't.
Mark Twain
#61. Never tell the truth to people who are not worthy of it.
Mark Twain
#62. In writing, I shall always confine myself strictly to the truth, except when it is attended with inconvenience.
Mark Twain
#63. None but the dead are permitted to tell the truth.
Mark Twain
#64. The reason why truth is so much stranger than fiction is that there is no requirement for it to be consistent.
Mark Twain
#65. If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything.
Mark Twain
#66. Most writers regard the truth as their most valuable possession, and therefore are economical in its use.
Mark Twain
#67. Why shouldn't truth be stranger than fiction? Fiction, after all, has to make sense.
Mark Twain
#68. Often, the surest way to convey misinformation is to tell the strict truth.
Mark Twain
#69. Now, then, that is the tale. Some of it is true.
Mark Twain
#71. No real gentleman will tell the naked truth in the presence of ladies.
Mark Twain
#72. Mark Twain is a voice of truth and a voice of equality and a voice of tolerance. Which means he is a voice of love.
Val Kilmer
#73. 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
#74. Truth is stranger than fiction-to some people, but I am measurably familiar with it.
Mark Twain
#75. There have been innumerable Temporary Seekers after the Truth-have you ever heard of a permanent one?
Mark Twain
#76. Truth is mighty and will prevail. There is nothing wrong with this, except that it ain't so.
Mark Twain
#77. Truth is more of a stranger than fiction.
Mark Twain
#78. When in doubt, tell the truth. That maxim I did invent, but never expected it to be applied to me. I did say, "When you are in doubt," but when I am in doubt myself I use more sagacity.
Mark Twain
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