Quote

At 50, a man can be an ass without being an optimist but not an optimist without being an ass

Mark Twain

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Mark Twain
Age: 74 †
Born: 1835
Born: November 30
Died: 1910
Died: April 21
Aphorist
Author
Autobiographer
Humorist
Journalist
Novelist
Opinion Journalist
Prosaist
Science Fiction Writer
Teacher
Florida
Missouri
Samuel Langhorne Clemens
Samuel L. Clemens
Samuel Clemens
Men
Ass
Optimistic
Entrepreneur
Humorous
Humorists
Clever
Lecturer
Funny
Badass
Inspirational
Publishers
Without
Optimist

More quotes by Mark Twain

Image
And so when I couldn't stand it no longer, I lit out. I got into my old rags and my sugar-hogshead again, and was free and satisfied.
Mark Twain
Image
All the territorial possessions of all the political establishments in the earth--including America, of course-- consist of pilferings from other people's wash. No tribe, howsoever insignificant, and no nation, howsoever mighty occupies a foot of land that was not stolen.
Mark Twain
Image
The newspaper that obstructs the law on a trivial pretext, for money's sake, is a dangerous enemy to the public weal. That awful power, the public opinion of a nation, is created in America by a horde of ignorant, self-complacent simpletons who failed at ditching and shoemaking and fetched up in journalism on their way to the poorhouse.
Mark Twain
Image
When you ascend the hill of prosperity, may you not meet a friend.
Mark Twain
Image
Each of you, for himself, by himself and on his own responsibility, must speak.
Mark Twain
Image
But old fools is the biggest fools there is.
Mark Twain
Image
Ignorance, intolerance, egotism, self-assertion, opaque perception, dense and pitiful chuckle headedness - and an almost pathetic unconsciousness of it all, that is what I was at nineteen and twenty.
Mark Twain
Image
Human beings seem to be a poor invention. If they are the noblest works of God where is the ignoblest?
Mark Twain
Image
Sane and intelligent human beings are like all other human beings, and carefully and cautiously and diligently conceal their private real opinions from the world and give out fictitious ones in their stead for general consumption.
Mark Twain
Image
There is no such thing as the Queen's English. The property has gone into the hands of a joint stock company and we own the bulk of the shares!
Mark Twain
Image
Education: that which reveals to the wise, and conceals from the stupid, the vast limits of their knowledge.
Mark Twain
Image
How little a thing can make us happy when we feel that we have earned it.
Mark Twain
Image
If ever you've been down in the dumps, hear these iconic authors share with you more than their writing wisdom.
Mark Twain
Image
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.'
Mark Twain
Image
But the elastic heart of youth cannot be compressed into one constrained shape long at a time.
Mark Twain
Image
If the man doesn't believe as we do, we say he is a crank, and that settles it. I mean, it does nowadays, because now we can't burn him.
Mark Twain
Image
One must travel, to learn. Every day, now, old Scriptural phrases that never possessed any significance for me before, take to themselves a meaning.
Mark Twain
Image
Customs do not concern themselves with right or wrong or reason. But they have to be obeyed one reasons all around them until he is tired, but he must not transgress them, it is sternly forbidden.
Mark Twain
Image
It was a place of sin, loose women, whiskey and gambling. It was no place for a good Presbyterian, and I did not long remain one.
Mark Twain
Image
We need not worry so much about what man descends from it's what he descends to that shames the human race.
Mark Twain