Mark Twain Quotes

I read somewhere that failure is an event, not a person, but I never feel that way. It's who I am.

You are the only person who can label what you do a failure. Failure is subjective.

By the end of the first decade of writing, I considered myself a confirmed failure in the eyes of the world.

For a long time, I felt like I failed myself, my career, and my record company.

I don't feel like I have a legacy.

Uncertainty is a personal matter; it is not the uncertainty but your uncertainty.

What is true for you is what you have observed yourself. And when you lose that, you have lost everything.

It is my eyes which see, and the sight of my eyes grants beauty to the earth. It is my ears which hear, and the hearing of my ears gives its song to the world. It is my mind which thinks, and the judgement of my mind is the only searchlight that can find the truth. It is my will which chooses, and the choice of my will is the only edict I must respect.

What are we after all our dreams, after all our memories?

I am interested in telling my particular truth as I have seen it.

A man who gives a good account of himself is probably lying, since any life when viewed from the inside is simply a series of defeats.

Every man is in some sort a failure to himself. No one ever reaches the heights to which he aspires.

What has history to do with me? Mine is the first and only world! I want to report how I find the world. What others have told me about the world is a very small and incidental part of my experience. I have to judge the world, to measure things.

I am more afraid of deserving criticism than of receiving it. I stand in awe of my own opinion. The secret demerits of which we alone, perhaps, are conscious, are often more difficult to bear than those which have been publicly censured in us, and thus in some degree atoned for.

What is my life for and what am I going to do with it? I don't know and I'm afraid.

It’s almost just a difference of mood as to whether I would describe myself one way or the other. I think I share that experience with most people.

When I found myself regarded as respectable, I began to wonder what sins I had committed. I must be very wicked, I thought. I began to engage in the most uncomfortable introspection.

Whether he sleeps or wakes,--whether he runs or walks,--whether he uses a microscope or a telescope, or his naked eye,--a man never discovers anything, never overtakes anything, or leaves anything behind, but himself. Whatever he says or does, he merely reports himself. If he is in love, he loves; if he is in heaven, he enjoys; if he is in hell, he suffers. It is his condition that determines his locality.

Every man is the hero of his own song.

There was a danger whenever I was on home ground. It was the danger of seeing my life through other eyes than my own. Seeing it as an ever-increasing roll of words like barbed wire, intricate, bewildering, uncomforting—set against the rich productions, the food, flowers, and knitted garments, of other women’s domesticity. It became harder to say that it was worth the trouble.

You can blame circumstances, but backsliding always begins in the heart.

I don't think I'm good, I don't think I'm a good rapper. I think a lot of people always want me to battle somebody and stuff like that which is cool, but I don't see myself as a rapper.

We can only know what we can truly imagine. Finally what we see comes from ourselves.

There is no disappointment we endure one-half so great as what we are to ourselves.

Fear of self is the greatest of all terrors, the deepest of all dread, the commonest of all mistakes. From it grows failure. Because of it, life is a mockery. Out of it comes despair.