Mark Twain Quotes about Death

I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.

I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.

Mark Twain

Inspirational, Death, Sarcastic

Most people can't bear to sit in church for an hour on Sundays. How are they supposed to live somewhere very similar to it for eternity?

Mark Twain

Death, Atheist, Sunday

I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it.

Mark Twain

Funny, Life, Death

Mark Twain (2014). “Mark Twain on Common Sense: Timeless Advice and Words of Wisdom from America's Most-Revered Humorist”, p.61, Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.

Why is it that we rejoice at a birth and grieve at a funeral? It is because we are not the person involved.

Mark Twain

Funny, Life, Death

Pudd'nhead Wilson ch. 9, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar" (1894)

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

Mark Twain

Positive, Death, Spiritual

"A Voice Crying In The Wilderness". Book by Edward Abbey, 1989.

It ain't those parts of the Bible that I can't understand that bother me, it is the parts that I do understand.

Mark Twain

Death, Religious, Atheist

Mark Twain (2014). “Mark Twain on Common Sense: Timeless Advice and Words of Wisdom from America's Most-Revered Humorist”, p.31, Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.

The easy confidence with which I know another man's religion is folly teaches me to suspect that my own is also.

Mark Twain

Inspirational, Life, Death

Mark Twain (2012). “Mark Twain at Your Fingertips: A Book of Quotations”, p.401, Courier Corporation

Both marriage and death ought to be welcome: the one promises happiness, doubtless the other assures it.

Mark Twain

Funny, Marriage, Death

Mark Twain (2014). “Mark Twain’s Letters & Speeches (Annotated Edition)”, p.563, Jazzybee Verlag

I thoroughly disapprove of duels. If a man should challenge me, I would take him kindly and forgivingly by the hand and lead him to a quiet place and kill him.

Mark Twain

Forgiveness, Death, Suicide

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

Mark Twain

Death, Motivational Sports, Fear

Mark Twain (2014). “Mark Twain on Common Sense: Timeless Advice and Words of Wisdom from America's Most-Revered Humorist”, p.54, Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.

I was dead for millions of years before I was born and it never inconvenienced me a bit.

Mark Twain

Death, Suicide, Religious

I was young and foolish then; now I am old and foolisher.

Mark Twain

Death, Age, Fool

Mark Twain (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Mark Twain (Illustrated)”, p.8840, Delphi Classics

No real estate is permanently valuable but the grave.

Mark Twain

Funny, Death, Real

Mark Twain (2014). “Mark Twain on Common Sense: Timeless Advice and Words of Wisdom from America's Most-Revered Humorist”, p.8, Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.

I think we never become really and genuinely our entire and honest selves until we are dead--and not then until we have been dead years and years. People ought to start dead, and they would be honest so much earlier.

Mark Twain

Death, Honesty, Thinking

Mark Twain (2004). “The Portable Mark Twain”, p.14, Penguin

It is a time when one's spirit is subdued and sad, one knows not why; when the past seems a storm-swept desolation, life a vanity and a burden, and the future but a way to death.

Mark Twain

Sad, Death, Past

Mark Twain, General Press (2016). “The Complete Works of Mark Twain: All 13 Novels, Short Stories, Poetry and Essays”, p.1257, GENERAL PRESS

Pity is for the living, envy is for the dead. Death, the refuge, the solace, the best and kindliest and most prized friend and benefactor of the erring, the forsaken, the old and weary and broken of heart.

Mark Twain

Death, Heart, Broken

Manifestly, dying is nothing to a really great and brave man.

Mark Twain

Death, Men, Brave

The report of my death was an exaggeration.

Mark Twain

Funny, Death, Exaggeration Is

Quoted in N.Y. Journal, 2 June 1897. These words were preceded by "James Ross Clemens, of St. Louis, a cousin of mine, was seriously ill two or three weeks ago in London, but is well now. The report of my illness grew out of his illness." The quotation is usually reported as "Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated." Much earlier (5 July 1863), the following appeared in a letter by Twain to the Territorial Enterprise: "There was a report about town, last night, that Charles Strong, Esq

The Impartial Friend: Death, the only immortal who treats us all alike, whose pity and whose peace and whose refuge are for all--the soiled and the pure, the rich and the poor, the loved and the unloved.

Mark Twain

Death, Rich, Pity

Mark Twain (2012). “Mark Twain at Your Fingertips: A Book of Quotations”, p.135, Courier Corporation

How lovely is death; and how niggardly it is doled out.

Mark Twain

Death, Lovely

Janet Smith, Mark Twain (1972). “Mark Twain on man and beast”, Lawrence Hill Books

Annihilation has no terrors for me, because I have already tried it before I was born -a hundred million years -and I have suffered more in an hour, in this life, than I remember to have suffered in the whole hundred million years put together. There was a peace, a serenity, an absence of all sense of responsibility, an absence of worry, an absence of care, grief, perplexity; and the presence of a deep content and unbroken satisfaction in that hundred million years of holiday which I look back upon with a tender longing and with a grateful desire to resume, when the opportunity comes.

Mark Twain

Death, Grateful, Grief

Autobiography ch. 49 (1959)

It has been reported that I was seriously ill--it was another man; dying--it was another man; dead--the other man again...As far as I can see, nothing remains to be reported, except that I have become a foreigner. When you hear it, don't you believe it. And don't take the trouble to deny it. Merely just raise the American flag on our house in Hartford and let it talk.

Mark Twain

Death, Believe, Men