The Wit and Wisdom of Mark Twain: A Book of Quotations

by Mark Twain

Renowned as a novelist, journalist, and humorist, Mark Twain is not only one of the most widely read and admired American writers, he is also among the most quoted. Wit and repartee permeate his work — from the short, light pieces to his great novel Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and even later, in dark meditations on the human condition where his humor takes on a cynical, satirical twist.
This remarkably inexpensive volume gathers together hundreds of Twain's most memorable quips and comments on life, love, history, culture, travel, and a diversity of other topics that occupied his thoughts over 50 years of writing and lecturing.
An invaluable, ready reference for writers, speakers, and others in search of amusing and insightful quotes, this entertaining and thought-provoking compilation is also an ideal introduction to Twain's inimitable style and thought.

Genres: Humor, Classics, Nonfiction, History, Biography, Philosophy, Literature

64 pages, softcover

First published September 1, 1987

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.

Samuel Langhorne Clemens, known by the pen name Mark Twain, was an American writer, humorist and essayist. He was praised as the "greatest humorist the United States has produced," with William Faulkner calling him "the father of American literature." His novels include The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and its sequel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), with the latter often called the "Great American Novel." Twain also wrote A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889) and Pudd'nhead Wilson (1894), and co-wrote The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today (1873) with Charles Dudley Warner.

Reviews

[Lilo · Rating 3 out of 5]

This little booklet is, definitely, not the best of Mark Twain's great wit and wisdom. It seems to be scratched-together delightful stuff that is not under someone else's copyright, watered down with not-so-impressive notes that have not been published before, probably for good reason.

I adore Mark Twain. And I think he would turn in his grave if he saw all those notes published he had not found worthy to get published himself.

[Brenda Knight · Rating 5 out of 5]

I truly enjoyed this book. It's the meat & potatos of Twain's best quotes. Some of the quotes are well known, others, not so known. Simply put, it's Twain at his very best on each and every page.
I highly recommend this book to all fans of Twain's humor and insite.

[Jimmy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some samples:

I am only human although I regret it.

Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest.

Be good and you will be lonesome.

[Man] is the only animal that has the True Religion--several of them.

The church is always trying to get other people to reform; it might not be a bad idea to reform itself a little by way of example.

God's inhumanity to man makes countless thousands mourn.

When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished in how much he had learned in seven years.

A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.

[Tammy Schoen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Such a great book...Mark Twain is one of those authors that I wish I could meet...maybe in the afterlife? He would probably make fun of my wish. Here are some gems:
About boys: "Now and then we had a hope that if we lived and were good, God would permit us to be pirates."

On government: "Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself."

"Irreverence is the champion of liberty."

And my favorite...when talking to a Mormon about polygamy, the Mormon wagered that Twain couldn't cite a single passage from the Bible which forbid polygamy. Twain's response? "No man can serve two masters."

Ha!!

[Skallagrimsen]

I credit this book with helping me develop an appreciation for the aphorism as a literary form.

[Jillian · Rating 3 out of 5]

Look at what you find when you clean out your office! I think my friend gave this to me as a souvenir from a trip she went on.

Mark Twain is always delightful, but I'm not sure his best lines are all included here. Still, there are some good ones here, and I like how the quotes are attributed to their original publication. Plus, my copy can fit in the palm of my hand, so it's convenient if you always want to travel with Twain.

[Lesley Looper · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this short book of quotes by Mark Twain! It was a quick and humorous read in front of the fireplace this evening. A couple of my favorites from this collection include:

"Wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been."

"Thunder is good, thunder is impressive; but it is the lightening that does the work."

[Cornel Diaconu · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's not that I did not like these citations from various works of Mark Twain, but I feel it is not really that collections of "most memorable quips amd comments on life, love, history, culture, travel and other topics that occupied his thoughts over 50 years of writing and lecturing" (as they put it in the postface).
I need to read more such collections before stating this.

[Ermina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Strahovito smiješno, ironično, satirično, ponegdje užasno ozbiljno i istinito. Sve mi se više i više dopada gospodin Twain. Preporučujem svakako, jer je kratko, domišljato, urnebesno i, čak, ČAK, poučno!

[Arthur Graham · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not quite as good as The Devil's Dictionary, IMO, but still quite good as I recall.

[Ninna · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm not a huge fan of short stories so a little book of blurbs is really not my thing. Of course, the witticisms are funny and clever, but I would still prefer to read the writings they came from rather then a random listing of them. But it was a prompt for this specific type of book so I thought Twain would be as entertaining as I could find for a bathroom reader.

[jacob van sickle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Man, I love Mark Twain.

[Rick · Rating 3 out of 5]

More of a reference for speakers in search of witty quotes than a book to read.

[Cristina · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love the wit of Mark Twain. In fact, if I had the opportunity to speak to a dead person, that would be him. However, wit and irony are not the same thing even though they embrace each other. There is a fair collection of phrases in this book which are very witty but there are some that just sound witty but truly are not. Good read, though.

[Amanda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mark Twain lounging in the garden, ca. 1899-1901, colorized

Samuel Langhorne Clemens aka Mark Twain - An inventor, entrepreneur, comedian, traveler, story teller/writer, family man, philosopher, what couldn’t this man do? All of these areas Twain excelled at are explored in this book making it a highly satisfying read – definitely recommended to all as an avid fan of Twain.

[James · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a professor once told me, "If you ever need a quote to pep up a paper, look no further than Mark Twain." This book is illustrative of that comment as he provides critiques and commentary on many different topics. I tend to collect quotations and use them to pep up conversations as well as academic papers and Twain is, indeed, a strong source of such quotes.

Whether commenting on the potential for both good and ill out of people in general or critiquing the works of other authors ranging from Jane Austen to Edgar Allan Poe, his quotes ring with a life of their own and are engaging.

My professor was right. If you find yourself in need of a quote, Twain is not a bad place to begin!

[Brian Eshleman · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was the perfect stocking-stuffer. 1) It allowed me to start reading immediately, as is my bookish nature. 2) I could actually share the quotes which had enough humor in them to engage conversation in a holiday mood. 3) It allowed me to pad my total of books read for 2011 as we near the year's end.

[Amanda Patterson · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you like Mark Twain, you'll like this collection. He is an American icon. It's difficult to dislike him. He's charming, witty and a shameless self-promoter. This means he knows what you want and he gives it to you.

[Adam Bricker · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing. Tid bits of genius that apply to multiple aspects of life!

[Dennis Littrell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tidy collection

Mr. Mark Twain has done a considerable amount of writing about stuff and such and so it don't much surprise a body to see that some publishing people have come out with a book about his "wit and wisdom." I don't see any harm in it, considering that he is long dead and gone and all, and so there is no danger that it might go to his head.

Anyway, this book is a small one, for which I am thankful, not being a great reader of books and whatnot. All the words of wit and wisdom are arranged in an agreeable manner what with headings like "Religion," and "Politics, History" and "Travel" and so on to keep things tidy. And the quotations from the many books that Mr. Mark Twain made are kept short and more or less to the point. And it is written down after everyone of them where the editor, whose name is Paul Negri, found them, which I guess is helpful for some people who want to look them up and read them again or to check and see if Paul Negri got them right.

I reckon he did since it sure looks like he got all the spelling right, although I couldn't say for sure not being a real top notch speller myself. All and all and taken all around, I think this little book does a body proud. I know I felt real good seeing as how myself is quoted in two or three places, and as far as memory serves, I do believe that Mr. Paul Negri got what I said right, although I'm not sure he really picked the best stuff. I mean, I said a lot more than any body could really bear in that long book by Mr. Mark Twain about my so-called "adventures" down the Mississippi with Jim and all that happened. He quotes me as saying that all men are cowards, and I guess that's pretty much the truth, if you look at it deep enough. But heck, that ain't really no big bit of wisdom. Any plum fool could see that considering how people are scared to death of people like kings and such and the Widow Douglas and how the best thing a body can do is just get away from ornery people and truant officers and such.

Not that I like to criticize, cause I ain't much good at it compared to Aunt Polly and Miss Watson and Mr. Mark Twain hisself.

Some of what he writes is pretty funny, like "Familiarity breeds contempt--and children." You gotta really like the use of the dash in that line, don't you? It kinda breaks up the flow of the idea and surprises a body reading it. It's just like when Mr. Mark Twain was on the stage giving all those lectures and talks and such. He just liked to make people laugh, especially if he could get them to laughing at themselves.

Some of these so called witticisms and wisdoms kinda leave a body to wondering what the tarnation old Sammy Clemens (which is his real name, don't you know) had in mind. For instance I don't see the meaning in this line, much less any wit and wisdom in it: "Nothing is so ignorant as a man's left hand, except a lady's watch." I'll be hogtied and sent to Sunday school if I can figure out whether he means a lady's watch on her blouse or a lady's watch in her eyes. And by the way my left hand's about as smart as my right, and I know tell of a few lefties who could tell Mr. Samuel Langhorne Clemens that if either of their hands was dumb, it would be the right one.

But some of this is right smart and makes for some pretty good reading, if a body has such a hankering. For example when I said that "Conscience takes up more room than all the rest of a person's insides" I must say in all modesty that I pretty much knew what I was talking about. But of course this refers only to such people that have done something they need to feel bad about. As Mr. Mark Twain says, "Man is the only animal who blushes. Or needs to."

I analyzed this here book a bit not having a lot else to do, and I can say that Mr. Mark Twain's main technique is to put one thing up against another, close by--the first having quite a real distance from the second, thereby making a body wonder and then have to laugh at such a joining up. Take this for instance: "Do your duty today and repent tomorrow." Now I gotta admit that I sure do cotton up to that juxtaposition, if you wanna call it that. It reminds me of something that Mr. Clemens did not say: "The road to hell is paved with good intentions." Doing too much good wearies a soul.

I also couldn't help but notice in my analyzing that Mr. Mark Twain is in no danger of going to the Good Place hisself and that may account for the fact that he is so darn awful cynical, if you understand my meaning.

I do have one criticism of this book. It is that Pudd'nhead Wilson seems to have more to say than I do, and considering that I said a lot more than he did in a book that is a lot longer, I just wonder if Mr. Paul Negri is supposing that Pudd'nhead (who wasn't named Pudd'nhead because he was all that full of wit and wisdom) is better at dispensing such than I am.

Be that as it may, this is, as I said before, a short and easy read and therefore I recommend it.

--Dennis Littrell, author of “The World Is Not as We Think It Is”

[Michael Percy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was surprised by Mark Twain's views on women. I have become accustomed to nineteenth-century authors verging on the misogynistic, but Twain, at least from this collection of quotes, would appear to be the exception to the rule. For instance (p. 6):

No civilization can be perfect until exact equality between man and woman is included.

This is a bit rich, of course, because Twain relied heavily on his wife, Olivia Langdon Clemens, although he seems to have worked hard to keep the family financially afloat. Twain writes (p. 6):

There is only one good sex. The female one.

Yet Twain was critical of humans (p. 5):

Such is the human race. Often it does seem such a pity that Noah didn't miss the boat.

There are many other quotes on religion, nationalism, the liberal ideal (as it relates to monarchy versus a republic), and socialisation. For example (p. 54):

We have no thoughts of our own, no opinions of our own: they are transmitted to us, trained into us.

Yet his pithy sayings are usually humorous (p. 54):

Noise proves nothing. Often a hen who has merely laid an egg cackles as if she had laid an asteroid.

I did not know that Twain had to declare bankruptcy in 1894. I had assumed that he was successful and that was that. But his ironic wit may well have been a result of his financial trials and tribulations: he went on an international lecture tour to make ends meet (p. 46):

To be busy is man's only happiness.

It makes me wonder how he maintained his sense of humour when things went awry. Maybe that his wife owned the rights to his work helped, hence his admiration for her. He was also experienced in the attitudes of the world (p. 50):

The man with a new idea is a crank until the idea succeeds.

I have now read a few of these Dover Thrift Editions of The Wit and Wisdom of..., and although they are quite short, and are not truly "books", there is much to learn from an intense immersion in the highlights of the greats of the past, and Twain is no exception.

[Tippy · Rating 2 out of 5]

I actually wished the quotes were't arranged by type. They started to get a bit repetitive that way.

A few favorites:

"Such is the human race. Often it does seem such a pity that Noah didn't miss the boat."

"There are many humorous things in the world; among them, the white man's notion that he is less savage than other savages."

"She was not quite what you would call refined. She was not quite what you would call unrefined. She was the kind of person that keeps a parrot."

"No civilization can be perfect until exact equality between man and woman is included." - I particularly like this one because many other people of this time are given a pass at sexist or racist attitudes because it was the norm. Even authors, envisioning future utopias in books such as "Looking Backwards" still cast women as second class citizens. But Twain decided for himself what was moral and right, despite the world around him. At least it seems so from quotes like these.

"Familiarity breeds contempt--and children."

"My works are like water. The works of great masters are like wine. But everyone drinks water."

"It is better to support schools than jails." -In the late 1800s!

"I always take it [Scotch whisky] at night as a preventative of toothache. I have never had the toothache; and what is more, I never intend to have it."

"He is useless on top of the ground; he ought to be under it, inspiring the cabbages."

"Put all your eggs in one basket and -WATCH THAT BASKET."

[Sharif · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this little book of Twain's quotes and I highly recommend it. Just to share some of my personal favorites are:

Travel is fatal to prejudice bigotry and narrow mindedness and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts.

There are two times in a man's life when he should not speculate : when he can't afford it, and when he can.

The phases of the womanly nature are infinite in their variety. Take any type of woman, and you will find in it something to respect, something to admire, something to love.

Make it a point to do something every day that you don't want to do. This is the golden rule for acquiring the habit of doing your duty without pain.

[Jill · Rating 3 out of 5]

This collection of Mark Twain quotes is not particularly witty or wise. It seems that the author/editor picked up some of Twain’s books and copied random sentences here and there. I took a semester long course at Stanford on the 100th anniversary of Twain’s death, and I know that there is a lot of material to select from. The editors could have perhaps cast a wider net to gather more interesting quotes. Nevertheless, there are some gems here and there in this book, and they are organized by topic for easy reference. I will keep this slim volume (53 pages) on hand for future reference.

[Edwin Setiadi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mark Twain’s greatest hits

Mark Twain was a witty and wise man. This book is perfect for those who wants to read his wits and gain his wisdom without having to read his novels.

The book is neatly categorised into topics, it forms to be a light reading of only the core wit and wisdom without the additional anecdotes.

Can you possibly tell me a better way to learn from Mark Twain?

[Tom Romig · Rating 5 out of 5]

Funny, biting, insightful, grating--Twain said it all!

"This atrocious doctrine of allegiance to party plays directly into the hands of politicians of the baser sort--and doubtless for that it was borrowed--or stolen--from the monarchical system." "Consistency" (speech)

"Irreverence is the champion of liberty and its only sure defense." (Notebook)

"The book of nature tells us distinctly that God cares no a rap for us--nor for any living creature." (Notebook)

[Sofia Alfaro · Rating 3 out of 5]

mark twains tweets irl. some are actually interesting and make you think, and some are sexist. not very different from todays society i suppose? i liked the little lines and my pondering thoughts, although im just a women so who knows if my mind really read the true meaning. sexism besides i really enjoy turning the gears in my brain rotted mind.

[william wolfe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Highly Enjoyed

I gave this a 5-star because I was able to relate to his wit. I found this to be a quick read however, highly enjoyable. I would recommend this to anyone, of any age looking for a fast read.

[Paul B. Soper]

The Best of the Wit and Wisdom of Mark Twain

This collection of Twain quotes is arranged alphabetically by subject so you can look up one of his pithy comments about anything with ease.

[Kevin · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a nice little volume that will be a breeze to get through but not without several chuckles of laughter. It’s also short enough to help you get that reading challenge met. Definitely recommended for fans of Twain or otherwise.