Mark Twain

Name the greatest of all inventors. Accident.

Prejudice cannot see the things that are because it is always looking for things that aren't.

There is a great deal of human nature in people.

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

There is no sadder sight than a young pessimist.

Prosperity is the best protector of principle.

I have made it a rule never to smoke more that one cigar at a time.

India has 2,000,000 gods, and worships them all. In religion other countries are paupers; India is the only millionaire.

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.

It is better to be a young June bug than an old bird of paradise.

Education is what you must acquire without any interference from your schooling.

Life is short, break the rules, forgive quickly, kiss slowly. love truly, laugh uncontrollably, and never regret anything that makes you smile.

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things 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.

It is better to take what does not belong to you than to let it lie around neglected.

The trouble with the world is not that people know too little; it's that they know so many things that just aren't so.

To get the full value of joy you must have someone to divide it with.

Biographies are but the clothes and buttons of the man. The biography of the man himself cannot be written.

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

Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it.

It is no use to keep private information which you can't show off.

Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear - not the absence of fear. Except a creature be part coward it is not a compliment to say it is brave.

What a wee little part of a person's life are his acts and his words! His real life is led in his head, and is known to none but himself.

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

Facts are stubborn things, but statistics are pliable.

The lack of money is the root of all evil.

Never let formal education get in the way of your learning.

No one has ever seen a Republican mass meeting that was devoid of the perception of the ludicrous.

Life would be infinitely better if we could be born at the age of 80 and gradually approach 18.

The man who does not read good books is no better than the man who can't.

When I was younger I could remember anything, whether it happened or not.

I think that to one in sympathy with nature, each season, in turn, seems the loveliest.

In the first place, God made idiots. That was for practice. Then he made school boards.

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.

Man will do many things to get himself loved, he will do all things to get himself envied.

Do something every day that you dont want to do this is the golden rule for acquiring the habit of doing your duty without pain.

The symbol of the race ought to be a human being carrying an ax, for every human being has one concealed about him somewhere, and is always seeking the opportunity to grind it.

If the world comes to an end, I want to be in Cincinnati. Everything comes there ten years later.

Work is a necessary evil to be avoided.

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

Great people are those who make others feel that they, too, can become great.

Make your mark in New York and you are a made man.

Fewer things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example.

October: This is one of the peculiarly dangerous months to speculate in stocks. The others are July, January, September, April, November, May, March, June, December, August and February.

Describing her first day back in grade school after a long absence a teacher said It was like trying to hold 35 corks under water at the same time.

We can't reach old age by another man's road.

I make it a rule never to smoke while I'm sleeping.

Do the right thing. It will gratify some people and astonish the rest.

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

No sinner is ever saved after the first twenty minutes of a sermon.

Laws are sand, customs are rock. Laws can be evaded and punishment escaped, but an openly transgressed custom brings sure punishment.

Words are only painted fire; a look is the fire itself.

To get the full value of joy You must have someone to divide it with.

Man is the only animal that blushes - or needs to.

A railroad is like a lie you have to keep building to it to make it stand.

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

If I cannot drink Bourbon and smoke cigars in Heaven than I shall not go.

Often it does seem a pity that Noah and his party did not miss the boat.

A street in Constantinople is a picture which one ought to see once-not oftener.

I have found out that there ain’t no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than to travel with them.

Humor must not professedly teach and it must not professedly preach, but it must do both if it would live forever.

Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.

Brooklyn praise is half slander.

Every time you stop a school you will have to build a jail. What you gain at one end you lose at the other. Its like feeding a dog on his own tail. It wont fatten the dog.

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.

I dont think there is anything in the whole earth that you cant learn in Berlin except the German language.

The highest perfection of politeness is only a beautiful edifice, built, from the base to the dome, of ungraceful and gilded forms of charitable and unselfish lying.

Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all of one’s lifetime.

A few fly bites cannot stop a spirited horse.

Denial ain't just a river in Egypt.

My books are like water; those of the great geniuses are wine. (Fortunately) everybody drinks water.

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

When you fish for love, bait with your heart, not your brain.

Be wise as a serpent and wary as a dove!

A clear conscience is the sure sign of a bad memory.

There are lies, damned lies and statistics.

In discarding the monkey and substituting man, our Father in Heaven did the monkey an undeserved injustice.

It has always been my rule never to smoke when asleep and never to refrain when awake.

The human race has one really effective weapon, and that is laughter.

The air up there in the clouds is very pure and fine bracing and delicious. And why shouldnt it be it is the same the angels breathe.

I never let my schooling interfere with my education.

Its no wonder that truth is stranger than fiction. Fiction has to make sense.

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

Todays burdens can strengthen you for tomorrow.

We can secure other people's approval, if we do right and try hard but our own is worth a hundred of it, and no way has been found out of securing that.

By trying we can easily learn to endure adversity. Another man's, I mean.

Only he who has seen better days and lives to see better days again knows their full value.

The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.

Damn the subjunctive. It brings all our writers to shame.

When red headed people are above a certain social grade their hair is auburn.

I've had a lot of worries in my life, most of which never happened.

Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do. Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.

Man was made at the end of the week's work when God was tired.

When red-headed people are above a certain social grade their hair is auburn.

When in doubt tell the truth.

An American has not seen the United States until he has seen Mardi Gras in New Orleans.

The best way to cheer yourself is to try to cheer someone else up.

There is no distinctly American criminal class - except Congress.

There comes a time in every rightly constructed boys life that he has a raging desire to go somewhere and dig for hidden treasure.

Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.

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