Author: Mark Twain

Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; truth isn’t.

Samuel Clemens (1835 – 1910) author & humorist
Beliefs Facts Honesty Truth

Optimist: Day-dreamer more elegantly spelled.

Samuel Clemens (1835 – 1910) author & humorist
Characteristics People

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

Samuel Clemens (1835 – 1910) author & humorist
Happiness Intelligence Money Poverty Wealth

Truth is more of a stranger than fiction.

Samuel Clemens (1835 – 1910) author & humorist
Characteristics Honesty Truth

Had double chins all the way down to his stomach.

Samuel Clemens (1835 – 1910) author & humorist
Appearance Body Fat Insults

I’m opposed to millionaires, but it would be dangerous to offer me the position.

Samuel Clemens (1835 – 1910) author & humorist
Beliefs Money Opinion Wealth

Most people are bothered by those passages of Scripture they do not understand, but the passages that bother me are those I do understand.

Samuel Clemens (1835 – 1910) author & humorist
Beliefs Intelligence Religion

The man who is a pessimist before 48 knows too much; if he is an optimist after it, he knows too little.

Samuel Clemens (1835 – 1910) author & humorist
Age Individuals People

The first act occupied three hours… I enjoyed that in spite of the singing.

Samuel Clemens (1835 – 1910) author & humorist
Reviews/Criticism

If man could be crossed with the cat, it would improve man but deteriorate the cat.

Samuel Clemens (1835 – 1910) author & humorist
Animals Cats People

He would come in and say he changed his mind… which was a gilded figure of speech, because he didn't have any.

Samuel Clemens (1835 – 1910) author & humorist
Communication Intelligence Language Mind

I was gratified to be able to answer promptly; I said I don’t know.

Samuel Clemens (1835 – 1910) author & humorist
Communication

New Orleans food is as delicious as the less criminal forms of sin.

Samuel Clemens (1835 – 1910) author & humorist
Food/Drink

Nothing seems to please a fly so much as to be taken for a currant; and if it can be baked in a cake and palmed off on the unwary, it dies happy.

Samuel Clemens (1835 – 1910) author & humorist
Animals

Few things are more irritating than when someone who is wrong is also very effective in making his point.

Samuel Clemens (1835 – 1910) author & humorist
Beliefs Communication Opinion

God was left out of the Constitution but was furnished a front seat on the coins of the country.

Samuel Clemens (1835 – 1910) author & humorist
Beliefs God

Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example.

Samuel Clemens (1835 – 1910) author & humorist
Characteristics

It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world, and moral courage so rare.

Samuel Clemens (1835 – 1910) author & humorist
Characteristics

When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around; but when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.

Samuel Clemens (1835 – 1910) author & humorist
Family Fathers Intelligence Learning Stupidity Wisdom

Education: The path from cocky ignorance to miserable uncertainty.

Samuel Clemens (1835 – 1910) author & humorist
Education Intelligence

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.

Samuel Clemens (1835 – 1910) author & humorist
Books Communication Reviews/Criticism