Inspirational Quotes by Mark Twain — Words of Wisdom for Daily Success

“It is strange the way the ignorant and inexperienced so often and so undeservedly succeed when the informed and the experienced fail. All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence, and then success is sure.”

“Ours is a terrible religion. The fleets of the world could swim in spacious comfort in the innocent blood it has spilt.”

“When even the brightest mind in our world has been trained up from childhood in a superstition of any kind, it will never be possible for that mind, in its maturity, to examine sincerely, dispassionately, and conscientiously any evidence or any circumstance which shall seem to cast a doubt upon the validity of that superstition. I doubt if I could do it myself.”

“The mind that becomes soiled in youth can never again be washed clean. I know this by my own experience, & to this day I cherish an unappeased bitterness against the unfaithful guardians of my young life, who not only permitted but compelled me to read an unexpurgated Bible through before I was 15 years old. None can do that and ever draw a clean sweet breath again on this side of the grave.”

“Man is a Religious Animal. He is the only Religious Animal. He is the only animal that has the True Religion--several of them. He is the only animal that loves his neighbor as himself and cuts his throat if his theology isn't straight. He has made a graveyard of the globe in trying his honest best to smooth his brother's path to happiness and heaven....The higher animals have no religion. And we are told that they are going to be left out in the Hereafter. I wonder why? It seems questionable taste.”

“In religion and politics people’s beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination, from authorities who have not themselves examined the questions at issue but have taken them at second-hand from other non-examiners, whose opinions about them were not worth a brass farthing.”

“It was pitiful for a person born in a wholesome free atmosphere to listen to their humble and hearty outpourings of loyalty toward their king and Church and nobility; as if they had any more occasion to love and honor king and Church and noble than a slave has to love and honor the lash, or a dog has to love and honor the stranger that kicks him! Why, dear me, ANY kind of royalty, howsoever modified, ANY kind of aristocracy, howsoever pruned, is rightly an insult; but if you are born and brought up under that sort of arrangement you probably never find it out for yourself, and don't believe it when somebody else tells you. It is enough to make a body ashamed of his race to think of the sort of froth that has always occupied its thrones without shadow of right or reason, and the seventh-rate people that have always figured as its aristocracies -- a company of monarchs and nobles who, as a rule, would have achieved only poverty and obscurity if left, like their betters, to their own exertions...”

“The easy confidence with which I know another man's religion is folly teaches me to suspect that my own is also. I would not interfere with any one's religion, either to strengthen it or to weaken it. I am not able to believe one's religion can affect his hereafter one way or the other, no matter what that religion may be. But it may easily be a great comfort to him in this life--hence it is a valuable possession to him.”

“The dog is a gentleman; I hope to go to his heaven not man's.”

“Man is the Reasoning Animal. Such is the claim. I think it is open to dispute. Indeed, my experiments have proven to me that he is the Unreasoning Animal... In truth, man is incurably foolish. Simple things which other animals easily learn, he is incapable of learning. Among my experiments was this. In an hour I taught a cat and a dog to be friends. I put them in a cage. In another hour I taught them to be friends with a rabbit. In the course of two days I was able to add a fox, a goose, a squirrel and some doves. Finally a monkey. They lived together in peace; even affectionately.”

“Each of us knows it all, and knows he knows it all—the rest, to a man, are fools and eluded. One man knows there is a hell, the next one knows there isn’t; one man knows monarchy is best, the next one knows it isn’t; one man knows high tariff is right, the next man knows it isn’t; one man knows there are witches, the next one knows there aren’t; one sect knows its religion is the only true one, there are sixty-four thousand five hundred million sects that know it isn’t so.”

“A man is accepted into a church for what he believes and he is turned out for what he knows.”

“There isn't time, so brief is life, for bickerings, apologies, heartburnings, callings to account. There is only time for loving, and but an instant, so to speak, for that.”

“Most people can't bear to sit in church for an hour on Sundays. How are they supposed to live somewhere very similar to it for eternity?”

“But it is a blessed provision of nature that at times like these, as soon as a man's mercury has got down to a certain point there comes a revulsion, and he rallies. Hope springs up, and cheerfulness along with it, and then he is in good shape to do something for himself, if anything can be done.”

“Sanity and happiness are an impossible combination.”

“The best way to cheer yourself is to try to cheer someone else up.”

“I lost Susy thirteen years ago; I lost her mother--her incomparable mother!--five and a half years ago; Clara has gone away to live in Europe and now I have lost Jean. How poor I am, who was once so rich! . . . Jean lies yonder, I sit here; we are strangers under our own roof; we kissed hands good-by at this door last night--and it was forever, we never suspecting it. She lies there, and I sit here--writing, busying myself, to keep my heart from breaking. How dazzling the sunshine is flooding the hills around! It is like a mockery. Seventy-four years ago twenty-four days. Seventy-four years old yesterday. Who can estimate my age today?”

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

“I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.”

“What gets us into trouble is not what we don't know. It's what we know for sure that just ain't so.”

“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!”

“When ill luck begins, it does not come in sprinkles, but in showers.”

“Life would be infinitely happier if we could only be born at the age of eighty and gradually approach eighteen.”

“Herodotus says, "Very few things happen at the right time, and the rest do not happen at all: the conscientious historian will correct these defects.”

“A man is never more truthful than when he acknowledges himself a liar.”

“Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't.”

“If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything.”

“A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.”

“Never tell the truth to people who are not worthy of it.”

“Забелязвам, че колкото по-здраво работя, толкова по-голям късмет имам.”

“So I learned then, that gold in it's native state is but dull, unornamental stuff, and that only low-born metals excite the admiration of the ignorant with an ostentatious glitter. However, like the rest of the world, I still go underrating men of gold and glorifying men of mica. Commonplace human nature cannot rise above that.”

“A proof once established is better left so.”

“I'll not go where there is any of that sort of thing going on, again. It's the sure way, and the only sure way;”

“Human nature is all alike.”

“The perfection of wisdom, and the end of true philosophy is to proportion our wants to our possessions, our ambitions to our capacities, we will then be a happy and a virtuous people.”

“To believe yourself brave is to be brave; it is the one only essential thing.”

“Никога не съм позволявал на училището да попречи на образованието ми.”

“Behold, the fool saith, "Put not all thine eggs in the one basket" - which is but a matter of saying, "Scatter your money and your attention"; but the wise man saith, "Pull all your eggs in the one basket and - WATCH THAT BASKET." - Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar”

“Be wise as a serpent and wary as a dove!”

“Yes - en I's rich now, come to look at it. I owns myself, en I's wuth eight hund'd dollars. I wisht I had de money, I wouldn' want no mo'.”

“The weakest of all weak things is a virtue which has not been tested in the fire.”

“It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.”

“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.”

“Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to reform (or pause and reflect).”

“If I were to construct a God I would furnish Him with some way and qualities and characteristics which the Present lacks.”

“A God who could make good children as easily a bad, yet preferred to make bad ones; who could have made every one of them happy, yet never made a single happy one; who made them prize their bitter life, yet stingily cut it short; who gave his angels eternal happiness unearned, yet required his other children to earn it; who gave is angels painless lives, yet cursed his other children with biting miseries and maladies of mind and body; who mouths justice, and invented hell--mouths mercy, and invented hell--mouths Golden Rules and forgiveness multiplied by seventy times seven, and invented hell; who mouths morals to other people, and has none himself; who frowns upon crimes, yet commits them all; who created man without invitation, then tries to shuffle the responsibility for man's acts upon man, instead of honorably placing it where it belongs, upon himself; and finally, with altogether divine obtuseness, invites his poor abused slave to worship him!”

“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.”

“Life itself is only a vision, a dream.”

“There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.”

“Everytime I read 'Pride and Prejudice' I want to dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone.”

“I once sent a dozen of my friends a telegram saying 'flee at once - all is discovered.' They all left town immediately.”

“Humor is tragedy plus time.”

“We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it and stop there lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot stove lid. She will never sit down on a hot stove lid again and that is well but also she will never sit down on a cold one anymore.”

“If we would learn what the human race really is at bottom, we need only observe it in election times.”

“Man was made at the end of the week's work when God was tired.”

“I was sorry to have my name mentioned as one of the great authors, because they have a sad habit of dying off. Chaucer is dead, Spencer is dead, so is Milton, so is Shakespeare, and I’m not feeling so well myself.”

“I can last two months on a good compliment.”

“I take my only exercise acting as a pallbearer at the funerals of my friends who exercise regularly.”

“There are those who scoff at the schoolboy, calling him frivolous and”

“A big leather-bound volume makes an ideal razorstrap. A thing book is useful to stick under a table with a broken caster to steady it. A large, flat atlas can be used to cover a window with a broken pane. And a thick, old-fashioned heavy book with a clasp is the finest thing in the world to throw at a noisy cat.”

“It usually takes me two or three days to prepare an impromptu speech.”

“Familiarity breeds contempt and children.”

“Often it does seem such a pity that Noah and his party did not miss the boat.”

“The lack of money is the root of all evil.”

“Humor is mankind's greatest blessing.”

“I notice that you use plain, simple language, short words and brief sentences. That is the way to write English―it is the modern way and the best way. Stick to it; don't let fluff and flowers and verbosity creep in. When you catch an adjective, kill it. No, I don't mean utterly, but kill most of them―then the rest will be valuable. They weaken when they are close together. They give strength when they are wide apart. An adjective habit, or a wordy, diffuse, flowery habit, once fastened upon a person, is as hard to get rid of as any other vice.”

“When red-headed people are above a certain social grade their hair is auburn.”

“It is by the goodness of god that in our country we have those 3 unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them.”

“When I was younger, I could remember anything, whether it had happened or not; but my faculties are decaying now and soon I shall be so I cannot remember any but the things that never happened. It is sad to go to pieces like this but we all have to do it.”

“Under certain circumstances, profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer.”

“A successful book is not made of what is in it, but what is left out of it.”

“What is Man? Man is a noisome bacillus whom Our Heavenly Father created because he was disappointed in the monkey.”

“In the first place God made idiots. This was for practice. Then he made school boards.”

“Eat a live frog first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day.”

“Adam was but human—this explains it all. He did not want the apple for the apple's sake, he wanted it only because it was forbidden. The mistake was in not forbidding the serpent; then he would have eaten the serpent.”

“When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained.”

“I have found out that there ain't no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than to travel with them.”

“April 1. This is the day upon which we are reminded of what we are on the other three hundred and sixty-four.”

“A banker is a fellow who lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining, but wants it back the minute it begins to rain.”

“A clear conscience is the sure sign of a bad memory.”

“All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence; then success is sure.”

“The easy confidence with which I know another man's religion is folly teaches me to suspect that my own is also.”

“I've lived through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened.”

“When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.”

“What would men be without women? Scarce, sir...mighty scarce.”

“I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did. I said I didn’t know.”

“I did not attend his funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it.”

“Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.”

“Substitute 'damn' every time you're inclined to write 'very;' your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.”

“Find a job you enjoy doing, and you will never have to work a day in your life.”

“The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.”

“Don't part with your illusions. When they are gone you may still exist, but you have ceased to live.”

“The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.”

“Good friends, good books, and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.”

“The secret of getting ahead is getting started.”

“Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.”

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do.”

“A thing long expected takes the form of the unexpected when at last it comes.”

“Happiness is a Swedish sunset it is there for all, but most of us look the other way and lose it.”