Quote

The secret source of humor is not joy but sorrow.

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
Sorrow
Source
Humor
Joy
Secret

More quotes by Mark Twain

Image
I came in with Halley's Comet in 1835. It is coming again next year, and I expect to go out with it. It will be the greatest disappointment of my life if I don't go out with Halley's Comet. The Almighty has said, no doubt: Now here are these two unaccountable freaks they came in together, they must go out together.
Mark Twain
Image
Explaining humor is a lot like dissecting a frog, you learn a lot in the process, but in the end you kill it.
Mark Twain
Image
If you invent two or three people and turn them loose in your manuscript, something is bound to happen to them -- you can't help it and then it will take you the rest of the book to get them out of the natural consequences of that occurrence, and so first thing you know, there's your book all finished up and never cost you an idea.
Mark Twain
Image
I have done more for San Francisco than any of its old residents. Since I left there it has increased in population fully 300,000. I could have done more - I could have gone earlier - it was suggested.
Mark Twain
Image
If I had more time, I would have written less.
Mark Twain
Image
What is the most rigorous law of our being? Growth. No smallest atom of our moral, mental, or physical structure can stand still a year. It grows - it must grow nothing can prevent it.
Mark Twain
Image
There is no sadder sight than a young pessimist.
Mark Twain
Image
I never write Metropolis for seven cents because I can get the same price for city. I never write policeman because I can get the same money for cop.
Mark Twain
Image
Every man is a moon and has a side which he turns toward nobody: you have to slip around behind it if you want to see it.
Mark Twain
Image
You perceive I generalize with intrepidity from single instances. It is the tourist's custom.
Mark Twain
Image
Any emotion, if it is sincere, is involuntary.
Mark Twain
Image
One can enjoy a rainbow without necessarily forgetting the forces that made it.
Mark Twain
Image
In my age, as in my youth, night brings me many a deep remorse. I realize that from the cradle up I have been like the rest of the race - never quite sane in the night.
Mark Twain
Image
There is a sumptuous variety about the New England weather... In the spring I have counted one hundred and twenty-six different kinds of weather inside of four and twenty hours.
Mark Twain
Image
And so I am become a knight of the Kingdom of Dreams and Shadows
Mark Twain
Image
Cats are the wildest of the tame and the tamest of the wild
Mark Twain
Image
There are two times in a man's life when he should not speculate: when he can't afford it, and when he can.
Mark Twain
Image
The easy confidence with which I know another man's religion is folly teaches me to suspect that my own is also.
Mark Twain
Image
The best of us would rather be popular than right.
Mark Twain
Image
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