Mark Twain

Quotes

The worst loneliness is not to be comfortable with yourself.
Grief can take care of itself, but to get the full value of a joy you must have somebody to divide it with.
If I owned both Hell and Texas, I'd live in Hell and rent out Texas.
I did it partly because it was worth it, but mostly because I shall never have to do it again.
How little a thing can make us happy when we feel that we have earned it.
I have spent most of my time worrying about things that have never happened.
A patriot is mocked, scorned and hated; yet when his cause succeeds, all men will join him, for then it costs nothing to be a patriot.
I can live two months on a good compliment.
Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do then 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.
An Englishman is a person who does things because they have been done before. An American is a person who does things because they haven't been done before.
The history of our race, and each individual's experience, are sown thick with evidence that a truth is not hard to kill and that a lie told well is immortal.
An enemy can partly ruin a man, but it takes a good-natured injudicious friend to complete the thing and make it perfect.
The universal brotherhood of man is our most precious possession, what there is of it.
A human being has a natural desire to have more of a good thing than he needs.
I cannot call to mind a single instance where I have ever been irreverent, except toward the things which were sacred to other people.
Laws are sand, customs are rock. Laws can be evaded and punishment escaped but an openly transgressed custom brings sure punishment.
I was born modest. Not all over, but in spots.
I am not one of those who in expressing opinions confine themselves to facts.
Sane and intelligent human beings are like all other human beings, and carefully and cautiously and diligently conceal their private real opinions from the world and give out fictitious ones in their stead for general consumption.
Our opinions do not really blossom into fruition until we have expressed them to someone else.
When a person cannot deceive himself the chances are against his being able to deceive other people.
We are always more anxious to be distinguished for a talent which we do not possess, than to be praised for the fifteen which we do possess.
When I was younger, I could remember anything, whether it had happened or not.
The right word may be effective, but no word was ever as effective as a rightly timed pause.
Most people are bothered by those passages of Scripture they do not understand, but the passages that bother me are those I do understand.
Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds upon the heel that crushes it.
The universal brotherhood of man is our most precious possession.
To cease smoking is the easiest thing I ever did. I ought to know, I've done it a thousand times.
At the beginning of a great national change, the patriot is a scarce man: scorned, ridiculed and forgotten. When his cause succeeds, however, all men will join him, for then it costs nothing to be a patriot.
Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.
By trying we can easily learn to endure adversity -- another man's I mean.
Education: that which reveals to the wise, and conceals from the stupid, the vast limits of their knowledge.
If the statistics are right, the Jews constitute but one percent of the human race. It suggests a nebulous dim puff of star dust lost in the blaze of the Milky Way. Properly the Jew ought hardly to be heard of; but he is heard of, has always been heard of. He is as prominent on the planet as any other people, and his commercial importance is extravagantly out of proportion to the smallness of his bulk. His contributions to the world's list of great names in literature, science, art, music, finance, medicine, and abstruse learning are also way out of proportion to the weakness of his numbers. He has made a marvelous fight in this world, in all the ages; and has done it with his hands tied behind him. He could be vain of himself and be excused for it. The Egyptian, the Babylonian, and the Persian rose, filled the planet with sound and splendor, then faded to dream-stuff and passed away; the Greek and Roman followed, and made a vast noise, and they are gone; other peoples have sprung up and held their torch high for a time, but it burned out, and they sit in twilight now, or have vanished. The Jew saw them all, beat them all, and is now what he always was, exhibiting no decadence, no infirmity of age, no weakening of his parts, no slowing of his energies, no dulling of his alert and aggressive mind.
Sacred cows make the best hamburgers.
I have never examined the subject of humor until now. I am surprised to find how much ground it covers. I have got its divisions and frontiers down on a piece of paper. I find it defined as a production of the brain, as the power of the brain to produce something humorous, and the capacity of percieving humor.
Those who say truth is stranger than fiction have wasted their time on poorly written fiction.
The idea that no gentleman ever swears is all wrong; he can swear and still be a gentleman if he does it in a nice and benevolent and affectionate way.
Why is it that we rejoice at a birth and grieve at a funeral? It is because we are not the person involved.
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"--a strange complaint to come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
Thousands of geniuses live and die undiscovered - either by themselves or by others.
Fleas can be taught nearly anything a congressman can.
So far as I am able to judge, nothing has been left undone, either by man or nature, to make India the most extraordinary country that the sun visits on his rounds. Nothing seems to have been forgotten, nothing overlooked.
[Mankind] is governed by minorities, seldom or never by majorities. It suppresses its feelings and its beliefs and follows the handful that makes the most noise. Sometimes the noisy handful is right, sometimes wrong, but no matter, the crowd follows it.
It is noble to teach oneself, it is still nobler to teach others.
[Humanity] has unquestionably one really effective weapon—laughter. Power, money, persuasion, supplication, persecution—these can lift at a colossal humbug—push it a little—weaken it a little, century by century; but only laughter can blow it to rags and atoms at a blast. Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand.
Are you so unobservant that you do not yet realize that sanity and hapiness are an impossible combination?
When I was fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have him around. When I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years.
October is one of the peculiarly dangerous months to speculate in stocks. Others are July, January, April, September, November, May, March, June, December, August and February.
There is nothing training cannot do. Nothing is above its reach. It can turn bad morals to good; it can destroy bad principles and recreate good ones; it can lift men to angelship.
Whenever you find yourself on the side of majority, it's time to pause and reflect.
I have a higher and grander standard of principle than George Washington. He could not lie; I can, but I won't.
If all men knew what each said of the other, there would not be four friends in the world.
We all have thoughts that would shame the devil.
Golf is a good walk, ruined.
When a disciple from the wildcat religious asylum comes marching forth, get under the bed. It doesn't matter whether he's a Christian, Hindu, Jew or Muslim.
A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way.
I have been through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened.
Let us be thankful for the fools. But for them the rest of us could not succeed.
Of all the animals, man is the only one that is cruel. He is the only one that inflicts pain for the pleasure of doing it.
Of all the creatures that were made, man is the most detestable. Of the entire brood he is the only one--the solitary one--that possesses malice. That is the basest of all instincts, passions, vices--the most hateful. He is the only creature that has pain for sport, knowing it to be pain. Also--in all the list he is the only creature that has a nasty mind.
I find that principles have no real force except when one is well fed.
In this world one must be like everybody else if he doesn't want to provoke scorn or envy or jealousy.
If there is a God, He is a malign thug.
To create man was a fine and original idea; but to add sheep was a tautology.
So much blood has been shed by the Church because of an omission from the Gospel: "Ye shall be indifferent as to what your neighbor's religion is." Not merely tolerant of it, but indifferent to it. Divinity is claimed for many religions; but no religion is great enough or divine enough to add that new law to its code.
The easy confidence with which I know another man's religion is folly teaches me to suspect that my own is also. I would not interfere with any one's religion, either to strengthen it or to weaken it. I am not able to believe one's religion can affect his hereafter one way or the other, no matter what that religion may be. But it may easily be a great comfort to him in this life--hence it is a valuable possession to him.
I was gradually coming to have a mysterious and shuddery reverence for this girl; nowadays whenever she pulled out from the station and got her train fairly started on one of those horizonless transcontinental sentences of hers, it was borne in upon me that I was standing in the awful presence of the Mother of the German Language... She had exactly the German way; whatever was in her mind to be delivered, whether a mere remark, or a sermon, or a cyclopedia, or the history of a war, she would get it into a single sentence or die. Whenever the literary German dives into a sentence, that is the last you are going to see of him till he emerges on the other side of his Atlantic with his verb in his mouth.
New Orleans food is as delicious as the less criminal forms of sin.
Of all God's creatures there is only one that cannot be made the slave of the lash. That one is the cat. If man could be crossed with cat it would improve man, but it would deteriorate the cat.
We have not the reverent feeling for the rainbow that a savage has, because we know how it is made. We have lost as much as we gained by prying into that matter.
I was seldom able to see an opportunity until it had ceased to be one.
The first half of life consists of the capacity to enjoy without the the chance; the last half consists of the chance without the capacity.
Men write many fine and plausible arguments in support of monarchy, but the fact remains that where every man has a voice, brutal laws are impossible.
I asked tom if countries always apologize when they had done wrong, and he says, 'Yes, the little one does.'
Grief can take care of itself; but to get the full value of a joy you must have someone to divide it with.
Whenever you find that you are on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.
Habit is habit, and not to be flung out the window by man, but coaxed downstairs, a step at a time.
Life does not consist mainly - or even largely - of facts and happenings. It consists mainly of the storm of thoughts that are forever blowing through one's mind.
I have spent most of my life worrying about things that have never happened
In his private heart no man respects himself.
I don't like to commit myself about heaven and hell-you see, I have friends in both places.
I would rather have my ignorance than another man's knowledge, because I have got so much more of it.
Anyone who stops learning is old, whether twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young. The greatest thing you can do is keep your mind young.
Never learn to do anything: if you don't learn, you'll always find someone else to do it for you.
Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.
Truth is more of a stranger than fiction.
Man is the Only Animal that Blushes. Or needs to.
The report of my death was an exaggeration.
Good breeding consists of concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of the other person.
A banker is a fellow who lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining, but wants it back the minute it begins to rain.
All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence; then success is sure.
Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear - not absence of fear.
Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please.
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.
If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man.
In Paris they simply stared when I spoke to them in French; I never did succeed in making those idiots understand their language.
My mother had a great deal of trouble with me, but I think she enjoyed it.
Never put off until tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow.
Often it does seem a pity that Noah and his party did not miss the boat.
Suppose you were an idiot and suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.
The human race has one really effective weapon, and that is laughter.
There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.
The man who doesn't read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them.
I was gratified to be able to answer promptly. I said I don't know.
It is easier to stay out than get out.
In the first place, God made idiots. That was for practice. Then he made school boards.
Always acknowledge a fault. This will throw those in authority off their guard and give you an opportunity to commit more.
It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly American criminal class except Congress.
Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn't.
You cannot depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.
I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying that I approved of it.
The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.
The rule is perfect: in all matters of opinion our adversaries are insane.
It was wonderful to find America, but it would have been more wonderful to miss it.
Honesty is the best policy - when there is money in it.
When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained.
Whenever you find that you are on the side of the majority, it is time to reform.
It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them.
Time cools, time clarifies; no mood can be maintained quite unaltered through the course of hours.
It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare.
The best way to cheer yourself is to try to cheer someone else up.
A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval.
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.
Don't part with your illusions. When they are gone you may still exist, but you have ceased to live.
Habit is habit and not to be flung out of the window by any man, but coaxed downstairs a step at a time.
Let us so live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.
When you cannot get a compliment any other way pay yourself one.
When in doubt, tell the truth.
The radical of one century is the conservative of the next. The radical invents the views. When he has worn them out the conservative adopts them.
[He was] a solemn, unsmiling, sanctimonious old iceberg who looked like he was waiting for a vacancy in the Trinity.
Never tell the truth to those unworthy of it....
Loyalty to petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul.
The fact that man knows right from wrong proves his intellectual superiority to other creatures; but the fact that he can do wrong proves his moral inferiority to any creature that cannot.
Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.
It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either.
I am prepared to meet anyone, but whether anyone is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter.
All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence -- and then success is sure.
I was gratified to be able to answer promptly. I said, "I don't know."
If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you; that is the principal difference between a dog and a man.
There is nothing so annoying as to have two people talking when you're busy interrupting.
Get your facts first and then you can distort them as much as you wish.
Principles have no real force except when one is well-fed.
I believe I have no prejudices whatsoever. All I need to know is that a man is a member of the human race. That's bad enough for me.
It is better to deserve honors and not have them than to have them and not to deserve them.
Many a small thing has been made large by the right kind of advertising.
Let us not be too particular; it is better to have old secondhand diamonds than none at all.
We are always too busy for our children; we never give them the time or interest they deserve. We lavish gifts upon them; but the most precious gift, our personal association, which means so much to them, we give grudgingly.
Forgiveness is the fragrance the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.
The miracle, or the power, that elevates the few is to be found in their industry, application, and perseverance under the prompting of a brave, determined spirit.
When people do not respect us we are sharply offended; yet deep down in his private heart no man much respects himself.
Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please
God made the Idiot for practice, and then He made the School Board
How come we rejoice at a birth and grieve at a funeral? It is because we are not the person involved.
If a person offend you and you are in doubt as to whether it was intentional or not, do not resort to extreme measures. Simply watch your chance and hit him with a brick.
"All say, 'How hard it is to die' - a strange complaint to come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
"Familiarity breeds contempt - and children.
"One of the most striking differences between a cat and a lie is that a cat has only nine lives.
"When angry, count four; when very angry, swear.
The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco.
Principles have no real force except when one is well fed.
It ain't those parts of the Bible that I can't understand that bother me, it's the parts that I do understand.
Virtue has never been as respectable as money.
Civilization is a limitless multiplication of unnecessary necessities.
Fame is a vapor; popularity an accident; the only earthly certainty is oblivion.
It has always been my rule never to smoke when asleep, and never to refrain when awake.
In Marseilles they make half the toilet soap we consume in America, but the Marseillaise only have a vague theoretical idea of its use, which they have obtained from books of travel.
It could probably be show by facts and figures that there is no distinctively native American criminal class except Congress.
Man is the only animal that blushes -- or needs to.
If Christ were here now there is one thing he would not be - a Christian.
George Washington as a boy was ignorant of the commonest accomplishments of youth - he could not even lie.
A man never reaches that dizzy height of wisdom that he can no longer be led by the nose.
I admire the serene assurance of those who have religious faith. It is wonderful to observe the calm confidence of a Christian with four aces.
The holy passion of Friendship is so sweet and steady and loyal and enduring a nature that it will last through a whole lifetime, if not asked to lend money.
In the first place, God made idiots. That was for practice. Then he made school boards
Religion consists in a set of things which the average man thinks he believes and wishes he was certain of.
It takes your enemy and your friend, working together, to hurt you: the one to slander you, and the other to bring the news to you.
There are times when one would like to end the whole human race, and finish the farce.
If you take a dog which is starving and feed him and make him prosperous, that dog will not bite you. This is the primary difference between a dog and a man.
I did not attend his funeral, but I wrote a nice letter saying I approved it.
When I think of the number of disagreeable people that I know who have gone to a better world, I am sure hell won't be so bad at all.
Whenever the literary German dives into a sentence, that is the last you are going to see of him until he emerges on the other side of his atlantic with his verb in his mouth.
Soap and education are not as sudden as a massacre but they are more deadly in the long run.
If the desire to kill and the opportunity to kill always came together, who would escape hanging?
This is the day upon which we are reminded of what we are on the other three hundred and sixty-four.
In our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either.
Carlyle said, "A lie cannot live"; it shows he did not know how to tell them.
It's a good idea to obey all the rules when you're young just so you'll have the strength to break them when you're old.
In certain trying circumstances, urgent circumstances, desperate circumstances, profanity furnishes a relief denied even to prayer.
There is no sadder sight than a young pessimist, except an old optimist.
Statistics show that we lose more fools on this day than on all other days of the year put together. This proves, by the numbers left in stock, that one Fourth of July per year is now inadequate, the country has grown so.
There ought to be a room in every house to swear in.
Good breeding consists in concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of the other person.
We all live in the protection of certain cowardices which we call our principles.
Barring that natural expression of villainy which we all have, the man looked honest enough.
I have done some indiscreet things in my day, but this thing of playing myself for a prophet was the worst. Still, it had its ameliorations. A prophet doesn't have to have any brains. They are good to have, of course, for the ordinary exigencies of life, but they are no use in professional work. It is the restfulest vocation there is. When the spirit of prophecy comes upon you, you merely take your intellect and lay it off somewhere in a cool place for a rest, and unship your jaw and leave it alone; it will work itself. The result is prophecy.
One of the most striking differences between a cat and a lie is that the cat has only nine lives.
Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please. (Facts are stubborn, but statistics are more pliable.)
I never could tell a lie that anybody would doubt, nor a truth that anybody would believe.
A lie can travel halfway round the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.
Why shouldn't truth be stranger than fiction? Fiction, after all, has to make sense.
I never write Metropolis for seven cents because I can get the same price for city. I never write policeman because I can get the same money for cop.
Of the delights of this world, man cares most for sexual intercourse, yet he has left it out of his heaven.
We owe a deep debt of gratitude to Adam, the first great benefactor of the human race: he brought death into the world.
We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it--and stop there; lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot stove lid. She will never sit on a hot stove lid again--and that is well; but also she will never sit down on a cold one anymore.
For example, in Year 1 that useless letter "c" would be dropped to be replased either by "k" or "s", and likewise "x" would no longer be part of the alphabet. The only kase in which "c" would be retained would be the "ch" formation, which will be dealt with later. Year 2 might reform "w" spelling, so that "which" and "one" would take the same konsonant, wile Year 3 might well abolish "y" replasing it with "i" and Iear 4 might fiks the "g
j" anomali wonse and for all.

Jenerally, then, the improvement would kontinue iear bai iear with Iear 5 doing awai with useless double konsonants, and Iears 6-12 or so modifaiing vowlz and the rimeining voist and unvoist konsonants. Bai Iear 15 or sou, it wud fainali bi posibl tu meik ius ov thi ridandant letez "c", "y" and "x" -- bai now jast a memori in the maindz ov ould doderez -- tu riplais "ch", "sh", and "th" rispektivli.

Fainali, xen, aafte sam 20 iers ov orxogrefkl riform, wi wud
hev a lojikl, kohirnt speling in ius xrewawt xe Ingliy-spiking werld.
Heaven goes by favour. If it went by merit, you would stay out and your dog would go in.
If we had less statemanship we could get along with fewer battleships.
A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.
You can't pray a lie.
Those that respect the law and love sausage should watch neither being made.
We have a criminal jury system which is superior to any in the world; and its efficiency is only marred by the difficulty of finding twelve men every day who don't know anything and can't read.
Humor is the great thing, the saving thing. The minute it crops up, all our irritations and resentments slip away, and a sunny spirit takes their place.
He had discovered a great law of human action, without knowing it - namely, that in order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to obtain.
The best cure for Christianity is reading the Bible.
By trying, we can endure adversity. Another man's, I mean.
Adam and Eve had many advantages, but the principle one was that they escaped teething.
Great people are those who make others feel that they, too, can become great.
Facts are stubborn things, but statistics are more pliable.
In religion and politics, people's beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second hand, and without examination.
There are several good protections against temptations, but the surest is cowardice.
It was enough to make a body ashamed of the human race.
Humor is the great thing, the saving thing. The minute it crops up, all our irritations and resentments slip away and a sunny spirit takes their place.
Quitting smoking is easy, I've done it thousands of times.
The best coffee in Europe is Vienna coffee, compared to which all other coffee is fluid poverty.
By trying we can easily learn to endure adversity. Another man's, I mean.
It takes your enemy and your friend, working together, to hurt you: the one to slander you, and the other to get the news to you.
What a good thing Adam had. When he said a good thing he knew nobody had said it before.
Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond; cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education.
I smoke in moderation, only one cigar at a time.
Somewhere between the Angels and the French lies the rest of humanity.
I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.
Always do right - this will gratify some and astonish the rest.
The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them.
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.
To cease smoking is the easiest thing I ever did. I ought to know because I've done it a thousand times.
A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.
Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint.
I have never taken any exercise except sleeping and resting.
Part of the secret of success in life is to eat what you like and let the food fight it out inside.
There are people who strictly deprive themselves of each and every eatable, drinkable, and smokable which has in any way acquired a shady reputation. They pay this price for health. And health is all they get for it. How strange it is. It is like paying out your whole fortune for a cow that has gone dry.
A man is never more truthful than when he acknowledges himself a liar.
A person with a new idea is a crank until the idea succeeds.
Action speaks louder than words but not nearly as often.
Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand.
Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don't mind, it doesn't matter.
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.
Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear.
Do the thing you fear most and the death of fear is certain.
Duties are not performed for duty's sake, but because their neglect would make the man uncomfortable. A man performs but one duty - the duty of contenting his spirit, the duty of making himself agreeable to himself.
Each man must for himself alone decide what is right and what is wrong, which course is patriotic and which isn't. You cannot shirk this and be a man. To decide against your conviction is to be an unqualified and excusable traitor, both to yourself and to your country, let me label you as they may.
Education consists mainly of what we have unlearned.
Facts are stubborn, but statistics are more pliable.
Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example.
The reason we hold truth in such respect is because we have so little opportunity to get familiar with it.
Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heal that has crushed it.
George Washington, as a boy, was ignorant of the commonest accomplishments of youth. He could not even lie.
Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please.
Golf is a good walk spoiled.
Humor is mankind's greatest blessing.
Humor is the great thing, the saving thing. The minute it crops up, all our irritation and resentments slip away, and a sunny spirit takes their place.
I am opposed to millionaires, but it would be dangerous to offer me the position.
I can live for two months on a good compliment.
I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it.
I don't give a damn for a man that can only spell a word one way.
I don't like to commit myself about heaven and hell -- you see, I have friends in both places.
I must have a prodigious quantity of mind; it takes me as much as a week sometimes to make it up.
I once sent a dozen of my friends a telegram saying 'flee at once - all is discovered.' They all left town immediately.
Ideally a book would have no order to it, and the reader would have to discover his own.
If you hold a cat by the tail you learn things you cannot learn any other way.
I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened.
If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything.
India has 2,000,000 gods, and worships them all. In religion, other countries are paupers; India is the only millionaire.
It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so.
It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.
It is by the goodness of God that, in this country, we have three benefits: freedom of speech, freedom of thought, and the wisdom never to use either.
It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world, and moral courage so rare.
Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see.
Let us live so that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.
Life should begin with age and its privileges and accumulations, and end with youth and its capacity to splendidly enjoy such advantages.
Love seems the swiftest, but it is the slowest of all growths. No man or woman really knows what perfect love is until they have been married a quarter of a century.
Man is the only animal that blushes - or needs to.
The first of April is the day we remember what we are the other 364 days of the year.
The holy passion of Friendship is of so sweet and steady and loyal and enduring a nature that it will last through a whole lifetime, if not asked to lend money.
When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around.
But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.
Denial ain't just a river in Egypt.
It's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog.
Of the delights of this world man cares most for sexual intercourse, yet he has left it out of his heaven.
The problem is not that we have too many fools, it's that the lightning isn't distributed right.
Familiarity breeds contempt - and children.
The best way to cheer yourself up is to try to cheer somebody else up.
There is no sadder sight than a young pessimist.
When I was younger I could remember anything, whether it happened or not.
Your faith is what you believe, not what you know.
The conviction of the rich that the poor are happier is no more foolish than the conviction of the poor that the rich are.
Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.
The man who carries a cat by the tail learns something that can be learned in no other way.
With ignorance and arrogance, success is assured.
Man was made at the end of the week's work when God was tired.
Wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been.
Dance like nobody's watching; love like you've never been hurt. Sing like nobody's listening; live like it's heaven on earth.
Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.
Providence protects children and idiots. I know because I have tested it.
I believe that our Heavenly Father invented man because he was disappointed in the monkey.
What would men be without women? Scarce, sir, mighty scarce.
Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.
One of the striking differences between a cat and a lie is that a cat has only nine lives.
What ought to be done to the man who invented the celebrating of anniversaries? Mere killing would be too light.
Of all the animals, man is the only one that lies.
There are laws to protect the freedom of the press's speech, but none that are worth anything to protect the people from the press.
I do not like work even when someone else does it.
When the human race has once acquired a supersitition nothing short of death is ever likely to remove it.
Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it's time to pause and reflect.
Water, taken in moderation, cannot hurt anybody.
Everyone is a moon and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody.
A baby is an inestimable blessing and bother.
The reason why truth is so much stranger than fiction is that there is no requirement for it to be consistent.
Sacred cows make the best hamburger.
Under certain circumstances, profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer.
It ain't the parts of the Bible that I can't understand that bother me, it is the parts that I do understand.
It is better to deserve honors and not have them than to have them and not deserve them.
Let us be thankful for the fools. But for them the rest of us could not succeed.
You can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.
Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company.
Suppose you were an idiot...and suppose you were a member of Congress...but I repeat myself.
Adam was the only man who, when he said a good thing, knew that nobody had said it before him.
When angry count to four; when very angry, swear.
It usually takes more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech.
There are several good protections against temptation, but the surest is cowardice.
Most writers regard truth as their most valuable possession, and therefore are most economical in its use.
Never tell the truth to people who are not worthy of it.
Grief can take care of itself, but to get the full value of joy you must have somebody to divide it with.
Happiness is a Swedish sunset; it is there for all, but most of us look the other way and lose it.
The only way to keep your health is to eat what you don't want, drink what you don't like, and do what you'd rather not.
We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it - and stop there; lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot stove-lid. She will never sit down on a hot stove-lid again - and that is well; but also she will never sit down on a cold one anymore.
Etiquette requires us to admire the human race.
Just the omission of Jane Austen's books alone would make a fairly good library out of a library that hadn't a book in it.
It is noble to be good; it is still nobler to teach others to be good - and less trouble.
Well enough for old folks to rise early, because they have done so many mean things all their lives they can't sleep anyhow.
Whoever is happy will make others happy, too.
We are discreet sheep; we wait to see how the drove is going, and then go with the drove.
Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest.
But who prays for Satan? Who, in eighteen centuries, has had the common humanity to pray for the one sinner that needed it most?.
History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme.
I can teach anybody how to get what they want out of life. The problem is that I can't find anybody who can tell me what they want.
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.
If voting made any difference they wouldn't let us do it.
If you tell the truth you don't have to remember anything.
Keep away from people who try to belittle your dreams. Small people always do that, but the really great ones make you feel that you, too, can become great.
Never put off till tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow.
Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason.
The difference between the almost right word and the right word is … the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.
The secret of getting ahead is getting started.
The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex, overwhelming tasks into small, manageable tasks, and then starting on the first one.
The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.
There's nothing more dangerous than an idea if its the only one you have.
Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do, so throw off the bowlines, sail away from safe harbor, catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore, Dream, Discover.
When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much he old man learned in seven years.
Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.