Quote

It is not in the least likely that any life has ever been lived which was not a failure in the secret judgment of the person who lived it.

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
Failure
Least
Secret
Persons
Person
Ever
Likely
Life
Judgment
Lived

More quotes by Mark Twain

Image
God, so atrocious in the Old Testament, so attractive in the New--the Jekyl and Hyde of sacred romance.
Mark Twain
Image
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
Image
I have spent most of my time worrying about things that have never happened. Worrying is not an action! In fact, it is action that alleviates concern and dissipates worries. Take more actions when you feel that worry is creeping in to steal your time. It need not be a huge action, any action in the direction you want to go will do.
Mark Twain
Image
I think that the reason why we Americans seem to be so addicted to trying to get rich suddenly is merely because the opportunity to make promising efforts in that direction has offered itself to us with a frequency out of all proportion to the European experience.
Mark Twain
Image
Man seems to be a rickety poor sort of thing, any way you take him a kind of British Museum of infirmities and inferiorities. He is always undergoing repairs. A machine that was as unreliable as he is would have no market.
Mark Twain
Image
Every man has a secret ambition: To outsmart horses, fish and women.
Mark Twain
Image
In religion and politics people’s beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination, from authorities who have not themselves examined the questions at issue but have taken them at second-hand from other non-examiners, whose opinions about them were not worth a brass farthing.
Mark Twain
Image
Change is the handmaiden Nature requires to do her miracles with.
Mark Twain
Image
Behold, the fool saith, Put not all thine eggs in the one basket - which is but a matter of saying, Scatter your money and your attention but the wise man saith, Pull all your eggs in the one basket and - WATCH THAT BASKET. - Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar
Mark Twain
Image
If I were going to construct a God I would furnish him with some ways and qualities and characteristics which the Present One lacks... He would spend some of His eternities in trying to forgive Himself for making man unhappy when He could have made him happy with the same effort and He would spend the rest of them in studying astronomy.
Mark Twain
Image
It's my opinion that every one I know has morals, though I wouldn't like to ask. I know I have. But I'd rather teach them than practice them any day. Give them to others-that's my motto.
Mark Twain
Image
I have too much respect for the truth to drag it out on every trifling occasion.
Mark Twain
Image
Seasickness: at first you are so sick you are afraid you will die, and then you are so sick you are afraid you won't die.
Mark Twain
Image
We can't always have the beautiful aspect of things. Let us make the most of our sights that are beautiful and let the others go
Mark Twain
Image
...heaven for climate, and hell for society.
Mark Twain
Image
Only a government that is rich and safe can afford to be a democracy, for democracy is the most expensive and nefarious kind of government ever heard of on earth
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
He is now rising from affluence to poverty.
Mark Twain
Image
Agassiz does recommend authors to eat fish, because the phosphorus in it makes brains. But I cannot help you to a decision about the amount you need to eat. Perhaps a couple of whales would be enough.
Mark Twain
Image
We are all alike, on the inside.
Mark Twain