The classic Mark Twain insults

Mark Twain insults his friends and enemies

Ever egalitarian, Mark Twain shared his disdain for people high and low, near and far.

A fellow passenger on a ship:

“A solemn, unsmiling, sanctimonious old iceberg that looked like he was waiting for a vacancy on the Trinity.”

Lillian Aldrich, wife of his friend Tom:

“I do not believe I could ever learn to like her except on a raft at sea with no other provisions in sight.”

Elisha Bliss, his publisher:

“He has been dead a quarter of a century now. My bitterness against him has faded away and disappeared. I feel only compassion for him and if I could send him a fan I would.”

Tom Ballou, riverboat captain:

“You take the lies out of him, and he’ll shrink to the size of your hat; you take the malice out of him, and he’ll disappear.”

Cecil Rhodes, magnate and politician:

“I admire him, I frankly confess it; and when his time comes I shall buy a piece of the rope for a keepsake.”

Friends and enemies in general:

“It takes your enemy and your friend, working together, to hurt you to the heart; the one to slander you and the other to get you the news.”

Mark Twain insults himself

The man born Samuel Langhorne Clemens had a keen sense of his own foibles and failings. 

“It takes me a long time to lose my temper, but once lost I could not find it with a dog.”

“I must have a prodigious quantity of mind; it takes me as much as a week sometimes to make it up.”

“I have seen slower people than I am — and more deliberate… And even quieter, and more listless, and lazier people than I. But they were dead.”

“I have made it a rule never to smoke more than one cigar at a time.”

“To cease smoking is the easiest thing. I ought to know. I’ve done it a thousand times.”

“It usually takes me three weeks to prepare an impromptu speech.”

“I am opposed to millionaires, but it would be dangerous to offer me the position.”

“It is irksome for me to behave myself. I had rather call on people who know me and will kindly leave me entirely unrestrained, and simply employ themselves in looking out for the spoons.”

Virtue, morality and moralisers

Some Mark Twain insults simply call out the ways we use virtue as a cloak for ourselves or a club for others. He had no time for moralisers or busybodies, and a nose for hypocrisy and humbug.

“When some men discharge an obligation, you can hear the report for miles around.”

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

“It is not best that we use our morals weekdays; it gets them out of repair for Sundays.”

“To be good is noble; but to show others how to be good is nobler and no trouble.” 

“Nothing so needs reforming as other people’s habits.”

“It doesn’t make any difference who we are or what we are, there’s always somebody to look down on.”

Religion

While Twain was himself a man of faith, he came to it with the eyes of a sceptic, as these impious Mark Twain insults show.

“Heaven for climate, hell for society.”

“Heaven goes by favor. If it went by merit, you would stay out and your dog would go in.”

“Faith is believing what you know ain’t so.”

“Man — he is the only animal that loves his neighbor as himself, and cuts his throat if his theology isn’t right.”

“If God is as vast as that, here’s above blasphemy; if he is as little as that, he is beneath it.”

“If Christ were here now, there is one thing he would not be — a Christian.”

The Bible:

“It is full of interest. It has noble poetry in it; and some clever fables; and some blood-drenched history; and some good morals; and a wealth of obscenity; and upwards of a thousand lies.”

The Book of Mormon:

“Chloroform in print. If Joseph Smith composed this book, the act was a miracle — keeping awake while he did it was, at any rate.”

Truth and lies

Many Mark Twain insults are directed at those who lack his nuanced view of the relative merits of truth and lies. Perhaps not surprising for one who made his living telling stories.

“Truth is the most valuable thing we have. Let us economize it.”

“Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please.” 

“When in doubt, tell the truth.” 

“The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.”

“You can assure my Virginia friends that I will make an exhaustive investigation of this report that I have been lost at sea. If there is any foundation for the report, I will at once apprise the anxious public. I sincerely hope there is no foundation for the report, and I also hope that judgment will be suspended until I ascertain the true state of affairs.”

“Some people lie when they tell the truth, I tell the truth lying.”

His own tendency to exaggerate:

“Gentlemen, you don’t know what a wide river is. I’ve seen this river so wide that it only had one bank.”

Writing and literature

As a writer and critic, Mark Twain was no respecter of reputation, as this collection of literary putdowns reveals.

The work of Henry James:

“Once you put it down, you simply can’t pick it up.”

Jane Austen:

“Everytime I read ‘Pride and Prejudice’ I want to dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone.”

“Classic: A book which people praise and don’t read.”

“A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.”

“Heroine: A girl who is perfectly charming to live with, in a book.”

“The man who does not read has no advantage over the man who cannot read.”

“The time to begin writing an article is when you have finished it to your satisfaction. By that time you begin to clearly and logically perceive what it is you really wanted to say.”

“My books are water; those of the great geniuses are wine. Everybody drinks water.”

On readers of his book Huckleberry Finn:

“Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.”

Check out our full collection of literary insults

Children

These Mark Twain insults show he understood children, both cause and effects.

“Familiarity breeds contempt — and children.”

“There comes a time in every rightly constructed boy’s life when he has a raging desire to go somewhere and dig for hidden treasure.”

“Now and then we had a hope that if we lived and were good, God would permit us to be pirates.”

“We were good Presbyterian boys when the weather was doubtful. When it was fair we did wander a little from the fold.”

A Twain dictum on filial diligence:

“Always obey your parents when they are present.”

Education

There are plenty of Mark Twain insults that suggest he didn’t feel he missed much by leaving school at 12.

“In the first place God made idiots. This was for practice. Then He made school boards.”

“All schools, all colleges have two great functions: to confer, and to conceal valuable knowledge.”

“Education consists mainly in what we have unlearned.”

Animals

Here are some Mark Twain insults that show he didn’t see man as the apex of the animal kingdom.

“Concerning the difference between man and the jackass: some observers hold there isn’t any. But this wrongs the jackass.

“A cat is more intelligent than people believe, and can be taught any crime.

“Man is the only animal that blushes. Or needs to.

Foreign tongues 

Language mattered to Mark Twain, as insults like these make clear. 

“Whenever the literary German dives into a sentence, that is the last you’re going to see of him till he emerges on the other side of the Atlantic with his verb in his mouth.”

“In Paris they just simply opened their eyes when we spoke to them in French. We never did succeed in making those idiots understand their own language.”

“Names are not always what they seem. The common Welsh name Bzjxxlwcp is pronounced Jackson.”

On his wife’s ineloquent swearing:

“You got the words right, but you don’t know the tune.”

Monarchy

Mark Twain considered the monarchy to be a royal pain in the ass. 

“A royal family of chimpanzees would answer every purpose, be worshipped as abjectly by the nation, and be cheaper.”

“A monarch when good is entitled to the consideration which we accord to a pirate who keeps Sunday School between crimes; when bad he is entitled to none at all.” 

“There never was a throne which did not represent a crime.”

Politics and politicians

These Mark Twain insults reveal a political iconoclast. Twain was a rebel Republican who supported racial equality, women’s rights, a peaceful foreign policy, and the uplift of the downtrodden. 

“The radical of one century is the conservative of the next. The radical invents the views. When he has worn them out the conservative adopts them.”

“I don’t mind what the opposition say of me so long as they don’t tell the truth about me. But when they descend to telling the truth about me I consider that this is taking an unfair advantage.”

“Suppose you are an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.” 

Check out our full collection of political insults

The professions

Having tried a half dozen professions before making his name as writer, Mark Twain was well-placed to mock many of them.

Public servants:

“Persons chosen by the people to distribute the graft.”

Doctors:

“He has been a doctor a year now, and he has had two patients — no, three, I think; yes, it was three. I attended their funerals.”

Historians:

“The very ink with which all history is written is merely fluid prejudice.”

Landlords:

“The partitions of the houses were so thin we could hear the women occupants of adjoining rooms changing their minds.”

Inventors:

“It is my heart-warm and world-embracing Christmas hope and aspiration that all of us, the high, the low, the rich, the poor, the admired, the despised, the loved, the hated, the civilized, the savage (every man and brother of us all throughout the whole Earth), may eventually be gathered together in a heaven of everlasting peace and bliss, except the inventor of the telephone.”

Editors:

“How often we recall, with regret, then Napoleon once shot at a magazine editor and missed him and killed a publisher. But we remember, with charity, that his intentions were good.”

“I’m not the editor of a newspaper, and shall always try to do right and be good, so that God will not make me one.”

Check out our full collection of insults on work and the professions

Fools and foolishness

A trio of Twain quotes on the persistence, prevalence and purpose of fools.

“The trouble isn’t that there are too many fools, but that the lightning isn’t distributed right.”

“Whenever you find you’re on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.”

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

Money and status

Many of Mark Twain’s insults are aimed at the tendency to confuse wealth with merit.

“Prosperity is the best protector of principle.”

“The lack of money is the root of all evil.”

“I’m going to live within my income this year even if I have to borrow money to do it.”

“Good breeding consists in concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of the other person.”

“When red-headed people are above a certain social grade their hair is auburn.” 

Food and drink

Here’s the final course in our banquet of Mark Twain insults.

“Cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education.”

“Ours was a reasonably comfortable ship, with the customary seagoing fare  — plenty of good food furnished by the Deity and cooked by the Devil.”

“The only way to keep your health is to eat what you don’t want, drink what you don’t like, and do what you’d druther not.”

Rhine wines:

“One tells them from vinegar by the label.”

Never the Twain – quotes that miss the Mark

We end our collection of Mark Twain insults with some of the most famous things there’s no record he ever said. As one of the great quote magnets, many insults are attributed to Twain with little evidence, especially in the age of the internet. It seems that people like to give well-loved witticisms the authority of one of history’s great wits.

“It’s better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than to open it and remove all doubt.”

Listed under What Twain Didn’t Say in Mark Twain: An Illustrated Biography

“Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.”

Bartleby note this is usually attributed to Charles Dudley Warner, a friend of Twain’s

“I refused to attend his funeral. But I wrote a very nice letter explaining that I approved of it.” 

Not found in his work and not attributed to him until 30 years after his death

“Golf is a good walk spoiled.”

Quote Investigator notes the first attribution to Twain came decades after he died

“Wagner’s music is better than it sounds.

Actually said by his friend Bill Nye, according to Wikiquote 

“Repartee is something we think of twenty four hours too late.”

Should not be regarded as authentic according to TwainQuotes

“There is a lot to say in her favor, but the other is more interesting.”

Attribution in a 1952 college newspaper is less than definitive.

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

Also often attributed to another quote magnet, Winston Churchill

“When I was a boy of 14, 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 at how much he had learned in seven years.” 

Identified as apocryphal by Snopes

“Writing is easy. All you have to do is cross out the wrong words.”

While nobody has found this quote in Twain’s work, he did know a wrong word when he saw one: “The difference between the almost right word and the right word is a large matter,” he said, “it’s the difference between the lightning-bug and the lightning.” He also suggested that some words warranted more than crossing out: “When you catch an adjective, kill it.”