Quote

A railroad is like a lie you have to keep building it to make it stand.

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
Building
Stand
Lying
Keep
Make
Like
Railroad
Railroads
Cowboy

More quotes by Mark Twain

Image
Such is luck! And such the treatment which honest, good perservance gets so often at the hands of unfair and malicious Nature!
Mark Twain
Image
Benaras is older than history, older than tradition, older even than legend, and looks twice as old as all of them put together!
Mark Twain
Image
The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.
Mark Twain
Image
There is only one good sex. The female one.
Mark Twain
Image
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?
Mark Twain
Image
A man may plan as much as he wants to, but nothing of consequence is likely to come of it until the magician circumstance steps in and takes the matter off his hands.
Mark Twain
Image
The pulpit and the optimist are always talking about the human race's steady march toward ultimate perfection. As usual, they leave out the statistics. It is the pulpit's way - the optimist's way.
Mark Twain
Image
Among other common lies, we have the silent lie - the deception which one conveys by simply keeping still and concealing the truth. Many obstinate truth-mongers indulge in this dissipation, imagining that if they speak no lie, they lie not at all.
Mark Twain
Image
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
Image
Music is a good thing and after all that soul-butter and hogwash, I never see it freshen up things so, and sound so honest and bully.
Mark Twain
Image
The insincerity of man-all men are liars, partial or hiders of facts, half tellers of truths, shirks, moral sneaks. When a merely honest man appears he is a comet-his fame is eternal-needs no genius, no talent-mere honesty
Mark Twain
Image
The less there is to justify a traditional custom, the harder it is to get rid of it
Mark Twain
Image
Any emotion, if it is sincere, is involuntary.
Mark Twain
Image
None of us can have as many virtues as the fountain-pen, or half its cussedness but we can try.
Mark Twain
Image
Every time you stop a school, you will have to build a jail.
Mark Twain
Image
Loyalty is a word which has worked vast harm for it has been made to trick men into being loyal to a thousand iniquities, whereas the true loyalty should have been to themselves - in which case there would have ensured a rebellion, and the throwing off of that deceptive yoke.
Mark Twain
Image
He had only one vanity he thought he could give advice better than any other person.
Mark Twain
Image
An author values a compliment even when it comes from a source of doubtful competency.
Mark Twain
Image
A discriminating irreverence is the creator and protector of human liberty.
Mark Twain
Image
Leaving out the gamblers, the burglars, and the plumbers, perhaps we do put our trust in God after a fashion. But, after all, it is an overstatement. If the cholera or black plague should come to these shores, perhaps the bulk of the nation would pray to be delivered from it, but the rest would put their trust in The Health Board.
Mark Twain