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
Together
Failing
Writing
Fiction
Test
Something
Hell
Good
Trouble
Quickly
Land
Tests
Possible
Fail
Character
Characters
Care
Succeed
More quotes by Mark Twain
If to be interesting is to be uncommonplace, it is becoming a question, with me, if there are any commonplace people
Mark Twain
By law of periodical repetition, everything which has happened once must happen again and again -- and not capriciously, but at regular periods, and each thing in its own period, not another's and each obeying its own law.
Mark Twain
You perceive I generalize with intrepidity from single instances. It is the tourist's custom.
Mark Twain
Every civilization carries the seeds of its own destruction, and the same cycle shows in them all. The Republic is born, flourishes, decays into plutocracy, and is captured by the shoemaker whom the mercenaries and millionaires make into a king. The people invent their oppressors, and the oppressors serve the function for which they are invented.
Mark Twain
What is there that confers the noblest delight? What is that which swells a man's breast with pride above that which any other experience can bring to him? Discovery!
Mark Twain
Many people have the reasoning facility, but no one uses it in religious matters.
Mark Twain
Rags, wretchedness, poverty and dirt, those signs and symbols that indicate the presence of [Muslim] rule more surely than the crescent-flag itself, abound.
Mark Twain
It's easy to make friends, but hard to get rid of them.
Mark Twain
The unexamined life may not be worth living, but the life too closely examined may not be lived at all.
Mark Twain
Temperate temperance is best intemperate temperance injures the cause of temperance.
Mark Twain
Sometimes my feelings are so hot that I have to take the pen and put them out on paper to keep them from setting me afire inside then all that ink and labor are wasted because I can't print the results
Mark Twain
There is nothing in the world like persuasive speech to fuddle the mental apparatus.
Mark Twain
All war must be just the killing of strangers against whom you feel no personal animosity strangers whom, in other circumstances, you would help if you found them in trouble, and who would help you if you needed it.
Mark Twain
How stunning are the changes which age makes in a man while he sleeps!
Mark Twain
When the Lord finished the world, he pronounced it good. That is what I said about my first work, too. But Time, I tell you, Time takes the confidence out of these incautious opinions. It is more than likely that He thinks about the world, now, pretty much as I think about the Innocents Abroad. The fact is, there is a trifle too much water in both.
Mark Twain
What is the most rigorous law of our being? Growth.
Mark Twain
Do right and you will be conspicuous.
Mark Twain
An occultation of Venus is not half so difficult as an eclipse of the sun, but because it comes seldom the world thinks it's a grand thing.
Mark Twain
The only certainties in life are death and taxes.
Mark Twain
It is a good thing to write for the amusement of the public, but it is a far higher and nobler thing to write for their instruction, their profit, their actual and tangible benefit.
Mark Twain
