Sourced and curated.

Truth is the most valuable thing we have. Let us economize it.

The report of my death was an exaggeration.

Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World · 1897

★ 7.7

Note

Loyalty to petrified opinions never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul.

1897

★ 7.3

Speech

Life does not consist mainly—or even largely—of facts and happenings. It consists mainly of the storm of thoughts that is forever blowing through one's head.

1884

★ 7.1

Speech · Autobiography and memoir

Mark Twain's Autobiography · 1910

★ 6.2

Tom appeared on the sidewalk with a bucket of whitewash and a long-handled brush. He surveyed the fence, and all gladness left him and a deep melancholy settled down upon his spirit. Thirty yards of board fence nine feet high. Life to him seemed hollow, and existence but a burden.

Autobiography and memoir · Autobiography and memoir

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer · 1876

★ 5.5

In religion and politics people's beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination.

The Autobiography of Mark Twain · 1910

★ 5.5

There was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth.

Cheer up—the worst is yet to come.

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn · 1884

★ 4.9

Letter

1894

★ 4.7

All kings is mostly rapscallions.

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn · 1884

★ 4.0

It’s lovely to live on a raft.

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn · 1884

★ 4.0

Necessity knows no law.

The Innocents Abroad · 1869

★ 4.0

In order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to attain.

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer · 1876

★ 4.0

Nothing so needs reforming as other people's habits.

Pudd'nhead Wilson · 1894

★ 4.0

Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear-not absence of fear.

Pudd'nhead Wilson · 1894

★ 4.0

Every one is a moon, and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody.

Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World · 1897

★ 4.0

True irreverence is disrespect for another man's god.

Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World · 1897

★ 4.0

The man with a new idea is a Crank until the idea succeeds.

Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World · 1897

★ 4.0

Prosperity is the best protector of principle.

Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World · 1897

★ 4.0

Man is the Only Animal that Blushes. Or needs to.

Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World · 1897

★ 4.0

I reckon I got to light out for the Territory ahead of the rest, because Aunt Sally she's going to adopt me and sivilize me and I can't stand it. I been there before.

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn · 1884

★ 3.9

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.

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn · 1884

★ 3.9

It was kind of solemn, drifting down the big still river, laying on our backs looking up at the stars, and we didn't ever feel like talking loud, and it warn't often that we laughed, only a little kind of a low chuckle. We had mighty good weather, as a general thing, and nothing ever happened to us at all, that night, nor the next, nor the next.

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn · 1884

★ 3.9

My kind of loyalty was loyalty to one's country, not to its institutions or its office-holders.

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court · 1889

★ 3.9

Irreverence is the champion of liberty and its only sure defense.

1889

★ 3.9

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.

Pudd'nhead Wilson · 1893

★ 3.9

Familiarity breeds contempt—and children.

1894

★ 3.9

It were not best that we should all think alike; it is difference of opinion that makes horse races.

I asked Tom if countries always apologized when they had done wrong, and he says: "Yes, the little ones does."

Pudd'nhead Wilson · 1894

★ 3.9

Novel · Adventure novel

Tom Sawyer Abroad · 1894

★ 3.9

Let me make the superstitions of a nation and I care not who makes its laws or its songs either.

Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World · 1897

★ 3.9

The timid man yearns for full value and asks a tenth. The bold man strikes for double value and compromises on par.

Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World · 1897

★ 3.9

The secret source of Humor itself is not joy but sorrow. There is no humor in heaven.

Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World · 1897

★ 3.9

When people do not respect us we are sharply offended; yet in his private heart no man much respects himself.

Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World · 1897

★ 3.9

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

Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World · 1897

★ 3.9

To do something, say something, see something, before anybody else—these are things that confer a pleasure compared with which other pleasures are tame and commonplace, other ecstasies cheap and trivial.

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

The Innocents Abroad · 1869

★ 3.8

Letter

1887

★ 3.8

No people in the world ever did achieve freedom by goody-goody talk and moral suasion: it being immutable law that all revolutions that will succeed must begin in blood.

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court · 1889

★ 3.8

Principles have no real force except when one is well fed.

1893

★ 3.8

No man or woman really knows what perfect love is until they have been married a quarter of a century.

1894

★ 3.8

Whoever has lived long enough to find out what life is, knows how deep a debt of gratitude we owe to Adam, the first great benefactor of our race. He brought death into the world.