A quote by Mark Twain (2024)

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What was Mark Twain's most famous quote? ›

Never put off till tomorrow what may be done day after tomorrow just as well. ′Classic′ - a book which people praise and don't read.

Mark Twain's quote, "Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect," suggests that blindly following the opinions of the majority may not always be the best course of action. It is a call to reflect on one's own beliefs and values and to not be swayed by popular opinion.

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

When work is a pleasure, life is a joy. When work is duty, life is slavery. There is no work so rude that man may not exalt it; no work so impassive that he may not breathe a soul into it; no work so dull that he may not enliven it.

Twain's final words were brief, abbreviated, unwritten, uncertain. Laying in his death bed, he indicated a couple of unfinished manuscripts and whispered to Paine, his biographer, “Throw away.” Hours later, he held the hand of his remaining child, Clare, told her goodbye, and added, apparently, “If we meet …”

In the beginning of a change, the patriot is a scarce man, and brave, and hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a patriot.

A marriage makes of two fractional lives a whole; It gives two purposeless lives a work, And doubles the strength of each to perform it. And something to live for.

It referred to his steamboating days, when the measure of the depth of the water was expressed with a crewman's cry “mark twain!,” meaning two fathoms, or 12 feet.

Happiness ain't a thing in itself--it's only a contrast with something that ain't pleasant. As soon as the novelty is over and the force of contrast dulled, it ain't happiness any longer, and you have to get something fresh. Every man is a suffering-machine and a happiness-machine combined.

Remember the Mark Twain quote, “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 was Mark Twain's famous quote about San Francisco? ›

Unfortunately, Twain's twin prose, “The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco,” has long been considered fictitious by San Francisco history buffs and literary scholars alike.

Mark Twain wrote, “Travel is fatal to prejuidce, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.”

“Always do right; this will gratify some people and astonish the rest.” “Do not put off until tomorrow what can be put off till day-after-tomorrow just as well.” “When I am king, they shall not have bread and shelter only, but also teachings out of books, for a full belly is little worth where the mind is starved.”

Each of you, for himself or herself, by himself or herself, and on his or her own responsibility, must speak. It is a solemn and weighty responsibility and not lightly to be flung aside at the bullying of pulpit, press, government or politician.

“Never tell the truth to people who are not worthy of it.” In my reading, Mark Twain was responding to to the prevalent academic Ethics of his day, namely, the Categorical Imperative of Immanuel Kant.

His most famous novels included The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), which are loosely based on Twain's boyhood experiences in Missouri. Twain also wrote numerous short stories, most notably “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” (1865).

In Green Hills of Africa, the 1935 account of his safari, Hemingway made his most enduring statement of literary criticism. He wrote that "all modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn. [. . .] There was nothing before.