Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
The test of any good fiction is that you should care something for the characters the good to succeed, the bad to fail. The trouble with most fiction is that you want them all to land in hell, together, as quickly as possible.
Mark Twain
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
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
Land
Tests
Possible
Fail
Character
Characters
Care
Succeed
Together
Failing
Writing
Fiction
Something
Hell
Test
Good
Trouble
Quickly
More quotes by Mark Twain
There is not a single celebrated Southern name in any of the departments of human industry except those of war, assassination, lynching, murder, the duel, repudiation, & massacre.
Mark Twain
There is no use in your walking five miles to fish when you can depend on being just as unsuccessful near home.
Mark Twain
A half-truth is the most cowardly of lies.
Mark Twain
We have an insanity plea that would have saved Cain.
Mark Twain
Principles aren't of much account anyway, except at election time. After that you hang them up to let them season.
Mark Twain
The only difference between reality and fiction is that fiction needs to be credible.
Mark Twain
The cat, having sat upon a hot stove lid, will not sit upon a hot stove lid again. Nor upon a cold stove lid.
Mark Twain
The sole impulse which dictates and compels a man's every act: the imperious necessity of securing his own approval, in every emergency and at all costs.... It is our only spur, our whip, our goad, our impelling power we have no other.
Mark Twain
In Marseilles they make half the toilet soap we consume in America, but the Marseillaise only have a vague theoretical idea of its use, which they have obtained from books of travel.
Mark Twain
No man, deep down in the privacy of his heart, has any considerable respect for himself.
Mark Twain
If you are with the quality, or at a funeral, or trying to go to sleep when you ain't sleepy - if you are anywheres where it won't do for you to scratch, why you will itch all over in upwards of a thousand places.
Mark Twain
I was standing in our dining-room thinking of nothing in particular, when a cablegram was put into my hand. It said, 'Susy was peacefully released today.' It is one of the mysteries of our nature that a man, all unprepared, can receive a thunder-stroke like that and live.
Mark Twain
Never knew before what eternity was made for. It is to give some of us a chance to learn German.
Mark Twain
When a man's dog turns against hime, it is time for his wife to pack her trunk and go home to mamma.
Mark Twain
The ancients stole all our ideas from us.
Mark Twain
when we badly want a thing, we go to hunting for good and righteous reasons for it we give it that fine name to comfort our consciences, whereas we privately know we are only hunting for plausible ones.
Mark Twain
The law is a system that protects everybody who can afford to hire a good lawyer.
Mark Twain
In other localities certain places in the streams are much better than others, but at Niagara one place is just as good as another, for the reason that the fish do not bite anywhere.
Mark Twain
An uneasy conscience is a hair in the mouth.
Mark Twain
God could create the world in six days because he didn't have to make it compatible with the previous version. Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company
Mark Twain