Mark Twain is one of the most quoted writers in the English language, and his name has become a kind of stamp people put on any clever line about life. The nine pieces of advice below are built on sayings linked to him: approve of yourself, stop letting imagined limits rule you, laugh more, drop anger, give up the idea that the world owes you, expect pushback when you try something new, steer your attention, help others, and go after the life you want.
Most of the sayings are genuinely his. A few are not, and we flag those plainly, because the advice is still worth having even when the author on the label is wrong. Each tip comes with a short explanation of why it holds up and one way to use it this week.
Who Mark Twain was, and why everyone quotes him
Mark Twain was the pen name of Samuel Langhorne Clemens, born in Missouri in 1835 and raised in the river town of Hannibal. Before he became famous he worked as a printer, a Mississippi steamboat pilot, a miner and a newspaper reporter. The name itself comes from river slang: “mark twain” was the call for two fathoms of water, just deep enough for a boat to pass safely.
He became America’s best-known humorist through books such as The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, through travel writing, and through packed lecture tours. He died in 1910. His sharp, compact sentences were made for repeating, and for more than a century people have repeated them, improved them, and sometimes invented new ones in his voice. That is why a quick check of the source matters before you print one on a mug.
Tips 1 and 2: Approve of yourself, and question your limits
The first tip comes from Twain’s late philosophical dialogue What Is Man? (1906): “A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval.” In the book he uses it to argue that even our kindest acts serve a private need for self-respect. You do not have to accept his gloomy theory to take the practical point. If you constantly disapprove of how you behave, you carry a low hum of discomfort into everything you do.
That discomfort often shows up as quiet self-sabotage. People reach the edge of a goal and then stall, procrastinate or find a reason to quit, because success would clash with their picture of who they are. Psychologists describe a related pattern as self-handicapping: creating obstacles in advance so that failure has an excuse. Approving of yourself does not mean praising everything you do. It means behaving in ways you can stand behind, and then allowing yourself to stand behind them.
The second tip usually travels with a famous line about age being “mind over matter”. Twain almost certainly never said it. Quote Investigator found it first in a 1968 North Carolina newspaper, credited to an anonymous government researcher, and attached to Twain only in 1977. The idea is still useful: many of the limits we worry about, from age to height to a receding hairline, weigh most heavily when we keep checking whether other people have noticed. Self-conscious people tend to read neutral reactions as rejection, which makes them more anxious and more awkward. If you stop treating a trait as a problem, others usually follow your lead.
Try this: write down one thing you have decided you are “too old”, “too late” or “not the type” to do. Next to it, note who actually told you so. Often the answer is nobody.
Tips 3 and 4: Laugh more, and let anger go
Twain built a career on humour, and he took it seriously. In his unfinished novel known as The Mysterious Stranger, a character says of the human race: “Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand.” A related line, calling humour mankind’s greatest blessing, is often credited to him as well.
Laughter does not solve problems, but it changes the state you face them in. A lighter mood loosens the narrow, threat-focused thinking that comes with stress, and many people find that ideas arrive more easily once they have relaxed. Shared jokes also build trust in families and workplaces, which matters when something goes wrong.
Anger is the opposite force. A saying widely attributed to Twain compares anger to an acid that damages the container holding it more than anything it is poured on. Whoever first wrote it, the image fits what many people notice: a grudge replays in your own head for days, while the person you are angry with may not even know. Anger can be a useful signal that a boundary has been crossed. The trouble starts when it is stored instead of dealt with.
Two healthy exits exist. Either raise the problem with the person calmly and try to resolve it, or decide it is not worth the fight and consciously drop it. Both are better than marinating.
Tip 5: Drop the feeling that the world owes you
A popular line tells you not to go around saying the world owes you a living, because the world owes you nothing and was here first. It is constantly credited to Twain, yet it does not appear in his known writings, and quotation researchers list it among sayings linked to him without evidence. Treat it as anonymous wisdom.
The idea behind it is simple. As children we are given food, shelter and attention without earning them. Some of that expectation can linger into adulthood as a vague sense that life should deliver what we want if we wait long enough. When it does not, the result is resentment.
Letting go of that expectation can feel harsh at first, but most people find it freeing. If nobody is coming to hand you the life you want, you are also free to build it yourself, one decision at a time. You are no longer waiting in line; you are in the driver’s seat.
Tips 6 and 7: Expect pushback, and steer your attention
This one is solidly Twain. In Following the Equator (1897), among the mock maxims of “Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar”, he wrote: “A person with a new idea is a crank until the idea succeeds.”
When you change your habits, your job or your beliefs, people around you react. Some cheer, some shrug, and some warn you off. A lot of that reaction says more about their own fears and choices than about yours. In practice the backlash is usually smaller and shorter than we imagine. Most people are busy with their own lives and move on quickly. The dramatic disapproval we rehearse in our heads often never arrives.
Tip seven is about attention. A saying attributed to Twain, which we could not trace to a specific text, urges you to drag your thoughts away from your troubles by the ears or the heels, any way you can. Modern psychology has a name for the opposite habit: rumination, the repetitive chewing over of problems, which research links to longer and deeper low moods. You cannot simply switch thoughts off, but you can redirect them. Focus on what you can learn from a situation, on the next small step, or on something absorbing that has nothing to do with the problem at all. Like any habit, the redirection gets easier with practice.
Tips 8 and 9: Help someone else, and go after what you want
Twain’s notebooks contain a version of the idea that the best way to cheer yourself up is to try to cheer someone else up. It sounds backwards, but research on kindness supports it. In one well-known 2008 experiment led by Elizabeth Dunn, people who were asked to spend a small sum on others reported feeling happier that evening than people told to spend it on themselves. Helping also starts a chain: the person you helped is more likely to return the favour or pass it on.
The ninth tip rests on the most shared “Twain” quotation of all, the one about being more disappointed in twenty years by what you did not do than by what you did, with its call to sail away from the safe harbour. It has never been found in his writings and appears to date from long after his death, so it should not carry his name. The message is still a good one. Studies of regret suggest that, over the long run, people tend to regret missed chances more than actions that went wrong.
That does not mean quitting your job tomorrow. It means noticing the things you keep postponing and asking which ones you would truly mind never doing.
Which of these sayings are really Twain’s?
A quick guide for anyone who wants to quote him accurately:
- Genuine: the line on needing your own approval (What Is Man?), laughter withstanding any assault (The Mysterious Stranger), and the crank with a new idea (Following the Equator).
- Probably genuine but loosely worded: cheering yourself up by cheering others, and humour as a blessing, both of which circulate in versions that differ from his notes.
- Unverified: anger as an acid, and dragging your thoughts away from your troubles.
- Not Twain: age as mind over matter, the world owing you nothing, and the “twenty years from now” sailing quotation.
When in doubt, look for the book, letter or speech a quotation comes from. If nobody can name one, say “often attributed to Mark Twain” instead.
Putting the nine tips to work
You do not need all nine at once. Pick the one that stings a little when you read it, because that is usually the one you need. Write it on a card and keep it where you will see it every morning, on the fridge or the bathroom mirror. Then, for one week, act on it in one small, concrete way: a conversation you have been avoiding, a grudge you decide to drop, a favour for a friend, or the first step toward a plan you keep postponing.
Twain himself was no saint of self-improvement. He lost a fortune on bad investments, fought with publishers and grieved deeply. But he kept writing, kept laughing and kept going, which may be the most useful lesson of all.
Sources: Quote Investigator: Age Is an Issue of Mind Over Matter; Quote Investigator: Mark Twain quotation research. The original list of tips was written by Henrik Edberg for The Positivity Blog.
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