Quotes from Mark Twain

All you need is ignorance and confidence and the success is sure.

A man's character may be learned from the adjectives which he habitually uses in conversation.

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.

There comes a time in every rightly constructed boy's life that he has a raging desire to go somewhere and dig for hidden treasure.

The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.

It were not best that we should all think alike; it is difference of opinion that makes horse-races.

Nothing so needs reforming as other people's habits.

The finest clothing made is a person's skin, but, of course, society demands something more than this.

There are no grades of vanity, there are only grades of ability in concealing it.

There are many humorous things in the world; among them, the white man's notion that he is less savage than the other savages.

What a wee little part of a person's life are his acts and his words! His real life is led in his head, and is known to none but himself.

What is the difference between a taxidermist and a tax collector? The taxidermist takes only your skin.

I have made it a rule never to smoke more that one cigar at a time.

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

We could use up two Eternities in learning all that is to be learned about our own world and the thousands of nations that have arisen and flourished and vanished from it. Mathematics alone would occupy me eight million years.

I am a great & sublime fool. But then I am God's fool, & all His works must be contemplated with respect.

Truth is mighty and will prevail. There is nothing wrong with this, except that it ain't so.

It usually takes me more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech.

The existing phrasebooks are inadequate. They are well enough as far as they go, but when you fall down and skin your leg they don't tell you what to say.

Part of the secret of a success in life is to eat what you like and let the food fight it out inside.

Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.

Put all your eggs in the one basket and—watch that basket.

I have no color prejudices nor caste prejudices nor creed prejudices. All I care to know is that a man is a human being, and that is enough for me; he can't be any worse.

If the desire to kill and the opportunity to kill came always together, who would escape hanging?