Skip to content

Character Quotes by Mark Twain

43 Character quotes by Mark Twain

All Character quotes Mark Twain’s page

Mark Twain writes that praise is nice, but affection is the most precious reward any person can win through character or achievement. He urges us to earn a solid character first, then let it guide our actions, because training can turn bad morals into good ones. He also points out that history repeats itself, no matter how strong our character.

Rate this collection: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ No ratings yet

The Moral Sense teaches us what is right, and how to avoid it-when unpopular.

Image

Virtue has never been as respectable as money.

Image

It is not best to use our morals weekdays, it gets them out of repair for Sunday.

Image

In statesmanship get formalities right, never mind about the moralities.

Image

Ethical man: A Christian holding four aces.

Image

It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare.

Image

What marriage is to morality, a properly conducted licensed liquor traffic is to sobriety.

Image

To arrive at a just estimate of a renowned man's character one must judge it by the standards of his time, not…

Image

There is no character, howsoever good and fine, but it can be destroyed by ridicule, howsoever poor and witless.

Image

The most permanent lessons in morals are those which come, not of book teaching, but of experience.

Image

Morals consist of political morals, commercial morals, ecclesiastical morals, and morals.

Image

We get our morals from books. I didn't get mine from books, but I know that morals do come from books- theoretically…

Image

Praise is well, compliment is well, but affection-that is the last and most precious reward that any man can win, whether by…

Image

The test of any good fiction is that you should care something for the characters; the good to succeed, the bad to…

Image

Surely the test of a novel's characters is that you feel a strong interest in them and their affairs the good to…

Image

There is nothing training cannot do. Nothing is above its reach. It can turn bad morals to good; it can destroy bad…

Image

“The Church still prizes the Moral Sense as man's noblest asset today, although the Church knows God had a distinctly poor opinion…

Image

The blunting effects of slavery upon the slaveholder's moral perceptions are known and conceded the world over; and a priveleged class, an…

Image

“In your country and mine we should have the privilege of making fun of this kind of morality, but it would be…

Image

Morals are not the important thing-nor enlightenment-nor civilization. A man can do absolutely well without them, but he can't do without something…

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…

Image

As by the fires of experience, so by commission of crime you learn real morals. Commit all crimes, familiarize yourself with all…

Image

As I have said before, I never had any large respect for good spelling. That is my feeling yet. Before the spelling-book…

Image

I will now claim - until dispossesed - that I was the first person in the world to apply the typewriter to…

Image

“He has one code of morals for himself, and quite another for his children. He requires his children to deal justly—and gently—with…

Image

there was no crime in unconscious plagiarism; that I committed it everyday, that he committed it everyday, that every man alive on…

Image

The moral of it is this: If you are of any account, stay at home and make your way by faithful diligence;…

Image

There is no character, howsoever good and fine, but it can be destroyed by ridicule, howsoever poor and witless. Observe the ass,…

Image

“A God who could make good children as easily a bad, yet preferred to make bad ones; who could have made every…

Image

It is not worth while to try to keep history from repeating itself, for man's character will always make the preventing of…

Image

When one's character begins to fall under suspicion and disfavor, how swift, then, is the work of disintegration and destruction.

Image

Morals are an acquirement - like music, like a foreign language, like piety, poker, paralysis - no man is born with them.

Image

It has always been a peculiarity of the human race that it keeps two sets of morals in stock-the private and the…

Image

The moral sense enables one to perceive morality, and avoid it. The immoral sense enables one to perceive immorality and enjoy it.

Image

What God lacks is convictions- stability of character. He ought to be a Presbyterian or a Catholic or something- not try to…

Image

One must keep one's character. Earn a character first if you can, and if you can't, then assume one.

Image

None of us can have as many virtues as the fountain-pen, or half its cussedness; but we can try.

Image

A man's character may be learned from the adjectives which he habitually uses in conversation.

Image

“There is a Moral sense, and there is an Immoral Sense. History shows us that the Moral Sense enables us to perceive…

Image

The low level which commercial morality has reached in America is deplorable. We have humble God fearing Christian men among us who…

Image

Other authors on Character

More by Mark Twain

Sing like no one's listening, love like you've never been hurt, dance like nobody's watching, and live like its heaven on earth.

If you had made the acquiring of ignorance the study of your life, you could not have graduated with higher honor than you could…

“The Creator sat upon the throne, thinking. Behind him stretched the illimitable continent of heaven, steeped in a glory of light and color; before…

It's easy to quit smoking. I've done it hundreds of times.

“It is never wrong to do the right thing.”

A man accustomed to American food and American domestic cookery would not starve to death suddenly in Europe, but I think he would gradually…

There is nothing training can't cannot do. Nothing is above its reach.

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 higher animals get their teeth without pain or inconvenience. Man gets his through months and months of cruel torture; he will never get…

“As far as I can see, Italy, for fifteen hundred years, has turned all her energies, all her finances, and all her industry to…

Begin with the determination to succeed and the work is half done already.

Many public-school children seem to know only two dates—1492 and 4th of July; and as a rule they don't know what happened on either…

If we could imagine such a man, that is a man who could invent the fly and send him out on his mission and…

You perceive, now, that these things are all impossible except in a dream. You perceive that they are pure and puerile insanities, the silly…

Lord save us all from a hope tree that has lost the faculty of putting out blossoms.