67 Brilliant Mark Twain Quotes About Failure and Learning From Mistakes

It is not in the least likely that any life has ever been lived which was not a failure in the secret judgment of the person who lived it.

Human nature is the same everywhere. It deifies success and has nothing but scorn for defeat.

It is strange the way the ignorant and inexperienced so often and so undeservedly succeed when the informed and the experienced fail.

No man is a failure who has friends.

The test of any good fiction is that you should care something for the characters. The good to succeed, the bad to fail.

If everyone was satisfied with himself, there would be no heroes.

We all do no end of feeling, and we mistake it for thinking.

Never mistake motion for progress.

Learn from the mistakes of others. You can’t live long enough to make them all yourself.

Once you start a mistake, the trouble is done and you never know what is going to come of it.

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

Habit is habit, and not to be flung out of the window by any man, but coaxed downstairs a step at a time.

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.

The secret of getting ahead is getting started.

Don’t wait. The time will never be just right.

Do the thing you fear most and the death of fear is certain.

Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear.

With courage you will dare to take risks, have the strength to be compassionate, and the wisdom to be humble. Courage is the foundation of integrity.

It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare.

Name the greatest of all inventors. Accident.

All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence, and then success is sure.

Continuous improvement is better than delayed perfection.

It is wiser to find out than to suppose.

Focus more on your desire than on your doubt, and the dream will take care of itself.

What work I have done I have done because it has been play. If it had been work, I shouldn’t have done it.

Thunder is good, thunder is impressive, but it is lightning that does the work.

There are basically two types of people. People who accomplish things, and people who claim to have accomplished things.

Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you too can become great.

I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened.

Never regret anything that made you smile.

Grief can take care of itself, but to get the full value of a joy you must have somebody to divide it with.

Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured.

Comparison is the death of joy.

Don’t part with your illusions. When they are gone, you may still exist, but you have ceased to live.

Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.

In the beginning of a change, the patriot is a scarce man, brave, hated, and scorned. When his cause succeeds, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a patriot.

Loyalty to petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul.

It is easier to stay out than to get out.

Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.

Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn’t.

The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.

If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.

It’s not the size of the dog in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the dog.

The lack of money is the root of all evil.

Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.

A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way.

Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see.

Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.

The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.

Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.

You can’t depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.

The trouble is not in dying for a friend, but in finding a friend worth dying for.

Don’t let schooling interfere with your education.

Nature knows no indecencies. Man invents them.

When in doubt, tell the truth.

Let us endeavor to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.

Noise proves nothing. Often a hen who has merely laid an egg cackles as if she had laid an asteroid.

The right word may be effective, but no word was ever as effective as a rightly timed pause.

Prosperity is the surest breeder of insolence.

Facts are stubborn things, but statistics are more pliable.

Substitute damn every time you’re inclined to write very. Your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.

It’s easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.

Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please.

Do something every day that you don’t want to do. This is the golden rule for acquiring the habit of doing your duty without pain.

The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter.

Good friends, good books, and a sleepy conscience. This is the ideal life.

Give every day the chance to become the most beautiful day of your life.