Mark Twain Quotes About Quality

• Do the right thing. It will gratify some people and astonish the rest.

  Mark Twain

  Inspirational, Funny, Motivational

• Unconsciously we all have a standard by which we measure other men, and if we examine closely we find that this standard is a very simple one, and is this: we admire them, we envy them, for great qualities we ourselves lack. Hero worship consists in just that. Our heroes are men who do things which we recognize, with regret, and sometimes with a secret shame, that we cannot do. We find not much in ourselves to admire, we are always privately wanting to be like somebody else. If everybody was satisfied with himself, there would be no heroes.

  Mark Twain

  Regret, Hero, Simple

• A pilot must have a memory developed to absolute perfection. But there are two higher qualities which he also must have. He must have good and quick judgment and decision, and a cool, calm courage that no peril can shake.

  Mark Twain

  Memories, Two, Perfection

• If you are with the quality, or at a funeral, or trying to go to sleep when you ain't sleepy - if you are anywheres where it won't do for you to scratch, why you will itch all over in upwards of a thousand places.

  Mark Twain

  Sleep, Funeral, Trying

  Mark Twain (2013). “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn”, p.9, Atlântico Press

• He wa'n't no common dog, he wa'n't no mongrel; he was a composite. A composite dog is a dog that is made up of all the valuable qualities that's in the dog breed-kind of a syndicate; and a mongrel is made up of all riffraff that's left over.

  Mark Twain

  Dog, Quality, Mutts

  Mark Twain (2015). “Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 3: The Complete and Authoritative Edition”, p.169, Univ of California Press

• We grant God the possession of all the qualities of mind except the one that keeps the others healthy; that watches over their dignity; that focuses their vision true--humor.

  Mark Twain

  God, Healthy, Mind

  Mark Twain, William M. Gibson (1969). “Mark Twain's Mysterious Stranger Manuscripts”, p.26, Univ of California Press

• So you see, the quality of humor is not a personal or a national monopoly. It's as free as salvation, and, I am afraid, far more widely distributed. But it has its value, I think. The hard and sordid things of life are too hard and too sordid and too cruel for us to know and touch them year after year without some mitigating influence, some kindly veil to draw over them, from time to time, to blur the craggy outlines, and make the thorns less sharp and the cruelties less malignant.

  Mark Twain

  Humor, Thinking, Years

  Mark Twain, Gary Scharnhorst (2009). “Mainly the truth: interviews with Mark Twain”, University Alabama Press

• As a thinker and planner the ant is the equal of any savage race of men; as a self-educated specialist in several arts she is the superior of any savage race of men; and in one or two high mental qualities she is above the reach of any man, savage or civilized!

  Mark Twain

  Art, Men, Race

  Mark Twain (2015). “Mark Twain's Essays: Top Essays”, p.57, 谷月社

• If I were going to construct a God I would furnish him with some ways and qualities and characteristics which the Present One lacks... He would spend some of His eternities in trying to forgive Himself for making man unhappy when He could have made him happy with the same effort and He would spend the rest of them in studying astronomy.

  Mark Twain

  Men, Effort, Forgiving

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