Mark Twain People Quotations

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

What, sir, would the people of the earth be without woman? They would be scarce, sir, almighty scarce.

Do not tell fish stories where the people know you; but particularly, don't tell them where they know the fish.

When a person cannot deceive himself the chances are against his being able to deceive other people.

There are people who can do all fine and heroic things but one - keep from telling their happiness to the unhappy.

When red-haired people are above a certain social grade their hair is auburn.

There are people who can do all fine and heroic things but one: keep from telling their happiness to the unhappy

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

Ignorant people think it's the noise which fighting cats make that is so aggravating, but it ain't so; it's the sickening grammar they use

The people stared at us everywhere, and we stared at them. We bore down on them with America's greatness until we crushed them.

Keep away from those who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you believe that you too can become great.

Keep away from small people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.

Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people alwaysdo that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.

Well, we can take you to meet Napoleon -- but he's shining the boots of the person who actually was the world's greatest military genius. He happens to have been a tinsmith from Pennsylvania who never had a chance to go to a military academy -- so he never even knew he was a great military genius. He was born with that capacity -- and only here in heaven do we actually know who these people are.

When I reflect upon the number of disagreeable people who I know who have gone to a better world, I am moved to lead a different life.

We never become really and genuinely our entire and honest selves until we are dead / and not then until we have been dead years and years. People ought to start dead and then they would be honest so much earlier.

There is nothing so annoying as to have two people talking when you're busy interrupting.

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

The way it is now, the asylums can hold the sane people but if we tried to shut up the insane we would run out of building materials.

The way it is now, the asylums can hold all the sane people but if we tried to shut up the insane we should run out of building materials

Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on or by imbeciles who really mean it.

Really great people make you feel that you, too, can become great.

People born to be hanged are safe in water.

Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest.

A classic is a book which people praise and don't read.

Education does not mean teaching people to know what they do not know; it means teaching them to behave as they do not behave.

It's better to keep quiet and have people think you stupid, than to talk and confirm it.

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

I learned long ago never to say the obvious thing, but leave the obvious thing to commonplace and inexperienced people to say

Sometimes people do get hurt

The reason most people don't go to church is because they've already been.

I have criticized absent people so often, and then discovered, to my humiliation, that I was talking with their relatives, that I have grown superstitious about that sort of thing and dropped it.

He was such a good man that people hated to see him coming.

My first American ancestor, gentlemen, was an Indian-an early Indian. Your ancestors skinned him alive, and I am an orphan. All those Salem witches were ancestors of mine. Your people made it tropical for them. . . . The first slave brought into New England out of Africa was an ancestor of mine-for I am a mixed breed, an infinitely shaded and exquisite Mongrel.

The way it is now, the asylums can hold the sane people, but if we tried to shut up the insane we should run out of building materials.

The moral of it is this: If you are of any account, stay at home and make your way by faithful diligence; but if you are 'no account,' go away from home, and then you will have to work, whether you want to or not. Thus you become a blessing to your friends by ceasing to be a nuisance to them-if the people you go among suffer by the operation.

Satan (impatiently) to Newcomer: The trouble with you Chicago people is, that you think you are the best people down here; whereas you are merely the most numerous.

There is only one expert who is qualified to examine the souls and the life of a people and make a valuable report - the native novelist. ... And when a thousand able novels have been written, there you have the soul of the people; and not anywhere else can these be had.

People are much more willing to lend you books than bookcases.

You can never find a Christian who has acquired this valuable knowledge, this saving knowledge, by any process but the everlasting and all-sufficient 'people say.'

Many people have the reasoning facility, but no one uses it in religious matters.

I wish to become rich, so that I can instruct the people and glorify honest poverty a little, like those kind hearted, fat, benevolent people do.

Never do wrong when people are looking.

Grown people everywhere are always likely to cling to the religion they were brought up in.

All people have had ill luck, but Jairus's daughter and Lazarus had the worst.

But we are all insane, anyway ... The suicides seem to be the only sane people.

I am aware that I am very old now; but I am also aware that I have never been so young as I am now, in spirit, since I was fourteen and entertained Jim Wolf with the wasps. I am only able to perceive that I am old by a mental process; I am altogether unable to feel old in spirit. It is a pity, too, for my lapses from gravity must surely often be a reproach to me. When I am in the company of very young people I always feel that I am one of them, and they probably privately resent it.

Never argue with people who buy ink by the gallon....

I find no change of consequence in grown people, I do not miss the dead. It does not surprise me to hear that this friend or that friend died at such and such a time, because I fully expected that sort of news. But somehow I had made no calculation on the infants. It never occurred to me that infants grow up...These unexpected changes, from infancy to youth, and from youth to maturity, are by far the most startling things I meet with.

Some people bring joy wherever they go, and some people bring joy whenever they go.

Nothing so needs reforming as other people's habits. Fanatics will never learn that, though it be written in letters of gold across the sky. It is the prohibition that makes anything precious.

There are people who think that honesty is always the best policy. This is a superstition. There are times when the appearance of it is worth six of it.

The world doesn't owe you anything. It was here first.

The secret to success: find out where people are going and get there first

While the rest of the species is descended from apes, redheads are descended from cats.

That is just the way with some people. They get down on a thing when they don’t know nothing about it.

But in this country we have one great privilege which they don't have in other countries. When a thing gets to be absolutely unbearable the people can rise up and throw it off. That's the finest asset we've got - the ballot box.

Those people.... early stricken of God, intellectually - the departmental interpreters of the laws in Washington... can always be depended on to take any reasonably good law and interpret the common sense all out of it.

Monarchies, aristocracies, and religions....there was never a country where the majority of the people were in their secret hearts loyal to any of these institutions.

the more I know about people, the better I like my dogs.

Don't tell fish stories where the people know you; but particularly, don't tell them where they know the fish.

We despise all reverences and all objects of reverence which are outside the pale of our list of sacred things. And yet, with strange inconsistency, we are shocked when other people despise and defile the things which are holy to us.

There are people who strictly deprive themselves of each and every eatable, drinkable, and smokable which has in any way acquired a shady reputation. They pay this price for health. And health is all they get for it. How strange it is. It is like paying out your whole fortune for a cow that has gone dry.

One mustn't criticize other people on grounds where he can't stand perpendicular himself

I hate to hear people say this Judge will vote so and so, because he is a Democrat -- and this one so and so because he is a Republican. It is shameful. The Judges have the Constitution for their guidance; they have no right to any politics save the politics of rigid right and justice when they are sitting in judgment upon the great matters that come before them.

I have seen slower people than I am and more deliberate... and even quieter, and more listless, and lazier people than I am. But they were dead.

It is a gratification to me to know that I am ignorant of art... Because people who understand art find nothing in pictures but blemishes...

Books are for people who wish they were somewhere else.

He liked to like people, therefore people liked him.

We can secure other people's approval, if we do right and try hard; but our own is worth a hundred of it, and no way has been found out of securing that.

There is probably no pleasure equal to the pleasure of climbing a dangerous Alp; but it is a pleasure which is confined strictly to people who can find pleasure in it.

It is a mistake that there is no bath that will cure people's manners, but drowning would help.

Some people give their problems swimming lessons instead of drowning them.

The more I know people, the more I love my dog.

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?

Some people get an education without going to college. The rest get it after they get out.

It's easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.

There are laws to protect the freedom of the press's speech, but none that are worth anything to protect the people from the press

The trouble with the world is not that people know too little; it's that they know so many things that just aren't so.

You meet people who forget you. You forget people you meet. But sometimes you meet those people you can't forget. Those are your 'friends

Don't go to sleep, so many people die there.

The only people that a bank will loan money to is the very people who don't need it.

When I reflect upon the number of disagreeable people who I know have gone to a better world, I am moved to lead a different life.

The two Testaments are interesting, each in its own way. The Old one gives us a picture of these people's Deity as he was before he got religion, the other one gives us a picture of him as he appeared afterward.

No one can tell me what is a good cigar - for me. I am the only judge. People who claim to know say that I smoke the worst cigars in the world. They bring their own cigars when they come to my house.

I am always reading immoral books on the sly, and then selfishly trying to prevent other people from having the same wicked good time.

I never made a success of a lecture delivered in a church yet. People are afraid to laugh in a church. They can't be made to do it in any possible way.

People who always feel jolly, no matter where they are or what happens to them—who have the organ of hope preposterously developed—who are endowed with an uncongealable sanguine temperament—who never feel concerned about the price of corn—and who cannot, by any possibility, discover any but the bright side of a picture—are very apt to go to extremes, and exaggerate with 40-horse microscopic power.

I always did hate for anyone to know what my plans or hopes or prospects were—for, if I kept people in ignorance in these matters, no one could be disappointed but myself, if they were not realized.

My mind changes often ... People who have no mind can easily be steadfast and firm, but when a man is loaded down to the guards with it, as I am, every heavy sea of foreboding or inclination, maybe of indolence, shifts the cargo.

Self-approval is acquired mainly from the approval of other people.

This autobiography of mine is a mirror, and I am looking at myself in it all the time. Incidentally I notice the people that pass along at my back - I get glimpses of them in the mirror - and whenever they say or do anything that can help advertise me and flatter me and raise me in my own estimation, I set these things down in my autobiography.

History teaches us that whenever a weak and ignorant people possess a thing which a strong and enlightened people want, it must be yielded up peaceably.

There are no people who are quite so vulgar as the over-refined.

I know all those people. I have friendly, social, and criminal relations with the whole lot of them.

I am a democrat only on principle, not by instinct, nobody is that. Doubtless some people say they are, but this world is grievously given to lying.

If to be interesting is to be uncommonplace, it is becoming a question, with me, if there are any commonplace people

We Americans are the most lavish and showiest and most luxury loving people on the earth; and at our masthead we fly one true and honest symbol, the gaudiest flag the world has ever seen.

You see, he knew his own laws just as other people so often know the laws: by words, not by effects. They take a meaning, and get to be very vivid, when you come to apply them to yourself.

The more you join with people in their joys and their sorrows, the more nearer and dearer they come to be to you.