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America
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In Boston they ask, How much does he know? In New York, How much is he worth? In Philadelphia, Who were his parents?
-Mark Twain
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It was wonderful to find America, but it would have been more wonderful to miss it.
-Mark Twain
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There isn't a single human characteristic that can be safely labeled as American.
-Mark Twain
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Ancestry, Ancestors
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Good breeding consists in concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of the other person.
-Mark Twain
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Anger
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When angry, count four; when very angry, swear.
-Mark Twain
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Appearance
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Barring that natural expression of villainy which we all have, the man looked honest enough.
-Mark Twain
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Aristocracy
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It is nobler to be good, and it is nobler to teach others to be good -- and less trouble!
-Mark Twain
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Assumptions
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There are two times in a man's life when he should not speculate: when he can't afford it, and when he can.
-Mark Twain
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Authors & Writing
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Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.
-Mark Twain
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Most writers regard the truth as their most valuable possession, and therefore are economical in its use.
-Mark Twain
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Write without pay until somebody offers to pay you. If nobody offers within three years, sawing wood is what you were intended for.
-Mark Twain
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As to the adjective, when in doubt strike it out.
-Mark Twain
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Baby, Babies
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A soiled baby, with a neglected nose, cannot be conscientiously regarded as a thing of beauty.
-Mark Twain
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We have not all had the good fortune to be ladies. We have not all been generals, or poets, or statesmen; but when the toast works down to the babies, we stand on common ground.
-Mark Twain
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Banks / Banking
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A banker is a fellow who lends his umbrella when the sun is shining and wants it back the minute it begins to rain.
-Mark Twain
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Belief
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Principles have no real force except when one is well-fed.
-Mark Twain
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Birds
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She was not quite what you would call refined. She was not quite what you would call unrefined. She was the kind of person that keeps a parrot.
-Mark Twain
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Bravery
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Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear--not absence of fear. Except a creature be part coward, it is not a compliment to say it is brave; it is merely a loose misapplication of the word. Consider the flea!--incomparably the bravest of all the creatures of God, if ignorance of fear were courage. Whether you are asleep or awake he will attack you, caring nothing for the fact that in bulk and strength you are to him as are the massed armies of the earth to a sucking child; he lives both day and night and all days and nights in the very lap of peril and the immediate presence of death, and yet is no more afraid than is the man who walks the streets of a city that was threatened by an earthquake ten centuries before. When we speak of Clive, Nelson, and Putnam as men who didn't know what fear was, we ought always to add the flea--and put him at the head of the procession.
-Mark Twain, Pudd'nhead Wilson, Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar
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It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world, and moral courage so rare.
-Mark Twain
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It's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog.
-Mark Twain
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Cats
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I urged that kings were dangerous. He said, then have cats. He was sure that a royal family of cats would answer every purpose. They would be as useful as any other royal family, they would know as much, they would have the same virtues and the same treacheries, the same disposition to get up shindies with other royal cats, they would be laughably vain and absurd and never know it, they would be wholly inexpensive, finally, they would have as sound a divine right as any other royal house...The worship of royalty being founded in unreason, these graceful and harmless cats would easily become as sacred as any other royalties, and indeed more so, because it would presently be noticed that they hanged nobody, beheaded nobody, imprisoned nobody, inflicted no cruelties or injustices of any sort, and so must be worthy of a deeper love and reverence than the customary human king, and would certainly get it.
http://www.twainquotes.com
-Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
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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.
-Mark Twain, Notebook (1884 entry), 1935, edited by Albert Begelow Paine
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...the person that had took a bull by the tail once had learnt sixty or seventy times as much as a person that hadn't, and said a person that started in to carry a cat home by the tail was getting knowledge that was always going to be useful to him, and warn't ever going to grow dim or doubtful. Chances are, he isn't likely to carry the cat that way again, either. But if he wants to, I say let him!
http://www.twainquotes.com/Cats.html
-Mark Twain, Tom Sawyer Abroad
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A home without a cat--and a well-fed, well-petted and properly revered cat--may be a perfect home, perhaps, but how can it prove title?
http://www.twainquotes.com/Cats.html
-Mark Twain, Pudd'nhead Wilson
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Caution
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Put all your eggs in one basket and then watch that basket.
-Mark Twain
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Books by and about Mark Twain