22/01/2024
10 Life Changing Mark Twain Quotes
Yujian Tang
The Hive Mind·
1. Never argue with stupid people, they will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.
I hate to learn this one the hard way. Some people are just stupid. If you try to help them, you’re just wasting your time. Love them, but love yourself more. Move on, let them be stupid on their own.
2. 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.
This is so true. You can see this from the titles you see on Medium that do well, you can see this from highly successful people, you can see this everywhere. The articles that do best on Medium are like “here’s how I did xyz cool thing and you can too.” Highly successful people like Matthew McConaughey, Barack Obama, and Oprah Winfrey are always encouraging others to be their best selves. I too, aspire to be like this. I’m not perfect, but I love sharing knowledge on my success because I’m such a mess. I know that if someone as much of a mess as me can achieve the success I’ve achieved, you can too.
3. Life is short. Break the rules. Forgive quickly. Kiss slowly. Love Truly. Laugh uncontrollably. Never regret anything that makes you smile.
I love this one. Life is short! Break rules that are harmless to break — stand facing backwards in the elevator, jaywalk that intersection (carefully!), eat your dessert before your meal, have fun with it! Also, laughter is the best medicine. Have a laugh, you’ll feel better. No seriously, even if you’re feeling good right now, have a laugh, you’ll feel even better. Never regret anything that makes you smile. I don’t want to have regrets at the end of my life. I also love breaking the rules, but don’t go too far with this.
4. The two most important days of your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.
I don’t know if there really is a God out there. I don’t know if there really is a meaning to life or why we’re born. But I believe there is. I believe there is because believing there is a reason for why I’m alive gives me strength. It adds meaning to my life. It makes every day more exciting. I love waking up every day ready to go! Ready to make a difference. I think that the purpose of my life is to go out and uplift as many people as possible. I want to help over a billion people learn new skills, feel better about themselves, and discover their own meanings of life.
5. Give every day a chance to become the most beautiful day in your life.
This is some great life advice. If you live every day like the last, you’ll get bored. We should give every day a chance. Take that chance that you may be afraid to take. Ask that girl or guy out, apply for that job, or start your own business, whatever it is that you want to do, do it today! All it takes is one decision, and any day could be the most beautiful day of your life.
Any day could be a beautiful day!
6. The most permanent lessons in morals are those which come not of book teaching but of experience.
Man, oh man, is this true. I had to learn this one the hard way. Sometimes we think it’s okay to do something, and then we see how it affects other people. For me personally, I kissed a girl in a relationship, and that led to secret dates, s*x, and much more while she was still dating the other guy! At first, I didn’t feel too bad about it, but man do I realize that mistake now. I haven’t talked to her in a while now. I know I hurt more than just her, but also the other guy. I hope they’re both okay, wherever they are.
7. A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn no other way.
I just love the way this quote is phrased. It seems to mean that there are some things you can’t learn except by fu***ng up. This has certainly been true for my life. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve failed. I failed at starting two businesses in the last year. What did I learn from those? I learned a lot about what I like and don’t like to do. I learned that there are people out there who are WAY better than me at pushing for sales and other things like that. I learned how to sell by finding clients that needed my skills. I learned how to take the emotional pain of rejection over and over again. I learned how to spot a gap in the market. I learned marketing, and so much more that I would never have learned if I hadn’t grabbed that cat by the tail.
8. I can teach anybody how to get what they want out of life. The problem is I can’t find anybody who can tell me what they want.
This is so true. It’s only recently after many attempts and failures and experiments that I’ve learned what I want. It really is true that clarity is power. Almost every business coach or self-help book will tell you that you need to have clarity. I now have way more clarity on what I want than I did before. It’s been a tough road, and I’m sure I’ll learn more as I go. Having that idea of what I want in life has really helped me shape my life though. I think we all know how to get what we want; we just don’t always know exactly what it is. Sometimes, we have an idea of what it is but we’re afraid to ask the universe for it because we’re scared that we’ll get it. What will we do when we get it? I know I’ve dealt with this and I’ve figured it out — I’ll keep learning and growing!
9. Action speaks louder than words, but not nearly as often.
I wanted to be a writer for a long time. I’ve heard so many people say they want to write books. I remember thinking to myself when I was younger, “Yeah I want to write books, that would be cool.” It took a while but I finally just decided to start. Once I started it became easier. Now I’ve written two books, one on Software Engineering, and another on How to Reduce Our Carbon Footprint by 100,000 Tons a Day. Actions certainly speak louder, not just to other people, but to ourselves!
10. The fear of death follows from the fear of life. The man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.
This goes back to my last post about Attention: What it is and How to get it, where I talk about how death is one of the things that really grabs our attention. It’s almost unavoidable for humans to not attend to death. For me, it sits in the back of my mind all the time. I’m not sure I don’t fear death, but I certainly took this quote to heart. I decided it was time for me to start living my life to the fullest. Am I perfect? Hell no. Do I fear death as much though? Nope. I’m ready to die at any moment knowing that even if just for a day, (it’s been a month now), that I live my life to the fullest extent. I do what I want and I’m working towards my personal dream. Whatever it is that you want to do, do it. Do it with all your heart, do it with all your might, do it scared, do it brave. It doesn’t matter how you do it. What matters is that you do it, live your life fully!
Quotes
Mark Twain
Inspiration
Live Your Dreams
Freedom