Mark Twain Man Quotations

It put our energies to sleep and made visionaries of us - dreamers and indolent... It is good to begin life poor; it is good to begin life rich - these are wholesome; but to begin it prospectively rich! The man who has not experienced it cannot imagine the curse of it.

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 by how much he'd learned in seven years.

The fact that man knows right from wrong proves his intellectual superiority to other creatures; but the fact that he can do wrong proves his moral inferiority to any creature that cannot.

Man is the master of the unspoken word, which spoken, is master of him.

Of all God's creatures there is only one that cannot be made the slave of the lash. That one is the cat. If man could be crossed with a cat it would improve man, but it would deteriorate the cat.

Morals are an acquirement - like music, like a foreign language, like piety, poker, paralysis - no man is born with them.

But when the time comes that a man has had his dinner, then the true man comes to the surface

Four years at West Point and plenty of books and schooling will learn a man a great deal, It won't learn him the river.

God puts something good and something lovable in every man His hands create.

It is often the case that the man who can't tell a lie thinks he is the best judge of one

...It is hard to overestimate how far a man can go in America if he looks good on a horse.

Religion consists of a set of things which the average man thinks he believes and wishes he was certain

Statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by an

Man - a creature made at the end of the week's work when God was tired.

To make a pledge of any kind is to declare war against nature; for a pledge is a chain that is always clanking and reminding the wearer of it that he is not a free man

Facts, or what a man believes to be facts, are always delightful - Get your facts first, and - then you can distort 'em as much as you please

When a man is known to have no settled convictions of his own he can't convict other people

Biographies are but the clothes and buttons of a man - the biography of the man himself cannot be written

There's one way to find out if a man is honest: ask him; if he says yes, you know he is crooked.

The universal brotherhood of man is our most precious possession, what there is of it

A man can seldom -- very, very, seldom -- fight a winning fight against his training; the odds are too heavy.

A man cannot be uncomfortable without his own approval

A man never reaches that dizzy height of wisdom that he can no longer be led by the nose

A man never reaches that dizzy height of wisdom that he can no longer be lead by the nose.

. . . a man must not hold himself aloof from the things which his friends and his community have at heart if he would be liked . . .

A man is never more truthful than when he acknowledges himself as a liar

Almost any man worthy of his salt would fight to defend his home, but no one ever heard of a man going to war for his boarding house

A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn by no other way

You try to tell me anything about the newspaper business! Sir, I have been through it from Alpha to Omaha, and I tell you that the less a man knows the bigger the noise he makes and the higher the salary he commands.

Each of you, for himself, by himself and on his own responsibility, must speak. And it is a solemn and weighty responsibility, and not lightly to be flung aside at the bullying of pulpit, press, government, or the empty catchphrases of politicians. Each must for himself alone decide what is right and what is wrong, and which course is patriotic and which isn't. You cannot shirk this and be a man. To decide against your convictions is to be an unqualified and inexcusable traitor, both to yourself and to your country, let man label you as they may. If you alone of all the nation shall decide one way, and that way be the right way according to your convictions of the right, you have done your duty by yourself and by your country- hold up your head! You have nothing to be ashamed of.

No better liar had there been in these parts as that ball player with hams for arms unless he be a man with a fishing rod and tackle box in his hands and his feet wet as rain.

No man has a wholly undiseased mind; in one way or another all men are mad

Nothing so liberalizes a man and expands the kindly instincts that nature put in him as travel and contact with many kind of people

In his private heart no man much respects himself.

I have not a particle of confidence in a man who has no redeeming vices.

I have no race prejudice. I think I have no color prejudices or caste prejudices nor creed prejudices. Indeed, I know it. I can stand any society. All that I care to know is that a man is a human being -- that is enough for me; he can't be any worse.

I haven't a particle of confidence in a man who has no redeeming vices

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

By his father he is English, by his mother he is American - to my mind the blend which makes the perfect man

His liberties were totally unrestricted, ... He was the only really independent person - boy or man - in the community, and by consequence he was tranquilly and continuously happy and envied by the rest of us.

I am a border ruffian from the State of Missouri,I am a Connecticut Yankee by adoption.In me you have Missouri morals,Connecticut culture;this gentlemaen,is the combination which makes the perfect man

The man that sets out to carry a cat by it's tail learns something that will always be useful and which will never grow dim or doubtful.

The man with a new idea is a crank until the idea succeeds

The man who is a pessimist before forty-eight knows too much; if he is an optimist after it he knows too little