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It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world, and moral
courage so rare.
- Mark Twain in Eruption
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 rather teach them than practice them any day. "Give
them to others"--that's my motto.
- Speech, "Morals and Memory," 7 March 1906
There are two kinds of Christian morals, one private and the other public. These
two are so distinct, so unrelated, that they are no more akin to each other
than are archangels and politicans. During three hundred and sixty-three days
in the year the American citizen is true to his Christian private morals, and
keeps undefiled the nation's character at its best and highest; then in the
other two days of the year he leaves his Christian private morals at home and
carries his Christian public morals to the tax office and the polls, and does
the best he can to damage and undo his whole year's faithful and righteous work.
- Speech, "Taxes and Morals," 22 January 1906
Morals consist of political morals, commercial morals, ecclesiastical morals,
and morals.
- More Maxims of Mark, Merle Johnson, 1927
We get our morals from books. I didn't get mine from books, but I know that
morals do come from books -- theoretically at least.
- Remarks at the opening of the Mark Twain Library, Redding, CT. Quoted in Mark
Twain: A Biography by Albert Bigelow Paine.
As by the fires of experience, so by commission of crime you learn real morals.
Commit all crimes, familiarize yourself with all sins, take them in rotation
(there are only two or three thousand of them), stick to it, commit two or three
every day, and by and by you will be proof against them. When you are through
you will be proof against all sins and morally perfect. You will be vaccinated
against every possible commission of them. This is the only way.
- Speech, "Theoretical and Practical Morals," 8 July 1899
The political and commercial morals of the United States are not merely food
for laughter, they are an entire banquet.
- Mark Twain in Eruption
It has always been a peculiarity of the human race that it keeps two sets of
morals in stock-the private and the real, and the public and the artificial.
- Mark Twain in Eruption
You can't keep a juvenile moral institution alive on two displays of its sash
per year.
- Mark Twain's Autobiography
It is not best to use our morals weekdays, it gets them out of repair for Sunday.
- Notebook, 1898
A man should not be without morals; it is better to have bad morals than none
at all.
- Mark Twain's Notebook
The most permanent lessons in morals are those which come, not of book teaching,
but of experience.
- A Tramp Abroad
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 to eat.
The supremest thing is the need of the body, not of the mind and spirit.
- Mark Twain, a Biography
"Moral creatures!" Now discard that slang. We haven't any morals
-- & never had any that weren't brummagem. We don't know any more about
morals than the Diety knew about astronomy when he wrote Genesis. And don't
you keep on intimating that we have intervals wherein we are not liars. There
aren't any such. I wrote a story about it last week -- a Xmas story --
for Harper, Entitled "Was it Heaven? Or Hell? You wait & see.
- Letter to Joseph Twichell, 7 September 1902
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