Mark Twain
American writer and humorist, 1835–1910. 2 explained quotes and 2 wrongly credited to them.
Everyone makes good resolutions on January 1 and breaks them within days. Twain teases his readers that they will soon be “paving hell” with their good intentions, as they do every year.
Read the full explanation →Twain's joke when a newspaper wrongly reported he was dying. His real words were drier: “The report of my death was an exaggeration.”
Read the full explanation →An old joke about a cold summer, retold about many cities. Twain's papers contain nothing like it about San Francisco, though he did once retell an older version about Paris.
See who really said it →A teenager thinks his father knows nothing. A few years later, grown up, he realizes his father was wise all along. The joke is that it was the son who changed.
See who really said it →No quotes match these filters yet. New quotes are added every week.
About Mark Twain
Mark Twain, the pen name of Samuel Langhorne Clemens, grew up in Hannibal, Missouri, worked as a Mississippi riverboat pilot and became the most famous American writer of his age, the author of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and a celebrated lecturer and wit.
Because he was so funny, Twain attracts misattributions almost as much as Einstein. The Mark Twain Project at the University of California, Berkeley, publishes his letters and papers and is the best guide to what he really wrote.
More lines by Twain
Short quotes checked against their sources.
- “Man is the only animal that blushes. Or needs to.”Following the Equator, Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar, 1897