Mark Twain

• 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.
• A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval.
• A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.
• A man is never more truthful than when he acknowledges himself a liar.
• A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way.
• A man's character may be learned from the adjectives which he habitually uses in conversation.
• A person who won't read has no advantage over one who can't read.
• A person with a new idea is a crank until the idea succeeds.
• A round man cannot be expected to fit in a square hole right away. He must have time to modify his shape.
• Action speaks louder than words but not nearly as often.
• Advertisements contain the only truths to be relied on in a newspaper.
• 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.
• All generalizations are false, including this one.
• All right, then, I'll go to hell.
• All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence, and then success is sure.
• Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest.
• 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.
• Any emotion, if it is sincere, is involuntary.
• Apparently there is nothing that cannot happen today.
• As an example to others, and not that I care for moderation myself, it has always been my rule never to smoke when asleep, and never to refrain from smoking when awake.
• Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint.
• Be careless in your dress if you will, but keep a tidy soul.
• Better a broken promise than none at all.
• Biographies are but the clothes and buttons of the man. The biography of the man himself cannot be written.
• But who prays for Satan? Who, in eighteen centuries, has had the common humanity to pray for the one sinner that needed it most?
• By trying we can easily endure adversity. Another man's, I mean.
• Cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education.
• Civilization is the limitless multiplication of unnecessary necessities.
• 'Classic.' A book which people praise and don't read.
• Climate is what we expect, weather is what we get.
• Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.
• 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.
• Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.
• Don't let schooling interfere with your education.
• Don't part with your illusions. When they are gone, you may still exist, but you have ceased to live.
• Don't tell fish stories where the people know you; but particularly, don't tell them where they know the fish.
• Drag your thoughts away from your troubles... by the ears, by the heels, or any other way you can manage it.
• Education consists mainly of what we have unlearned.
• Everything has its limit - iron ore cannot be educated into gold.
• Everything human is pathetic. The secret source of humor itself is not joy but sorrow. There is no humor in heaven.
• Facts are stubborn, but statistics are more pliable.
• Familiarity breeds contempt - and children.
• Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example.
• Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn't.
• Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel 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.
• Giving up smoking is the easiest thing in the world. I know because I've done it thousands of times.
• Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company.
• God made the Idiot for practice, and then He made the School Board.
• Golf is a good walk spoiled.
• Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.
• Grief can take care if itself, but to get the full value of a joy you must have somebody to divide it with.
• Honesty is the best policy - when there is money in it.
• Humor is mankind's greatest blessing.
• I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened.
• 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 have never taken any exercise except sleeping and resting.
• I must have a prodigious quantity of mind; it takes me as much as a week sometimes to make it up.
• I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did. I said I didn't know.
• I was seldom able to see an opportunity until it had ceased to be one.
• If man could be crossed with the cat, it would improve man but deteriorate the cat.
• If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything.
• It ain't those parts of the Bible that I can't understand that bother me, it is the parts that I do understand.
• 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 could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native criminal class except Congress.
• It is better to deserve honors and not have them than to have them and not deserve them.
• 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 better to take what does not belong to you than to let it lie around neglected.
• 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.
• It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare.
• It is easier to stay out than get out.
• It is just like man's vanity and impertinence to call an animal dumb because it is dumb to his dull perceptions.
• It is not best that we should all think alike; it is a difference of opinion that makes horse races.
• It usually takes me more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech.
• It was wonderful to find America, but it would have been more wonderful to miss it.
• It's good sportsmanship to not pick up lost golf balls while they are still rolling.
• It's no wonder that truth is stranger than fiction. Fiction has to make sense.
• It's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog.
• Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see.
• Laws control the lesser man... Right conduct controls the greater one.
• Let us live so that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.
• Let us make a special effort to stop communicating with each other, so we can have some conversation.
• Let us not be too particular; it is better to have old secondhand diamonds than none at all.
• Life would be infinitely happier if we could only be born at the age of eighty and gradually approach eighteen.
• Lord save us all from a hope tree that has lost the faculty of putting out blossoms.
• Loyalty to the country always. Loyalty to the government when it deserves it.
• Man - a creature made at the end of the week's work when God was tired.
• Man is the only animal that blushes - or needs to.
• Man will do many things to get himself loved, he will do all things to get himself envied.
• Many a small thing has been made large by the right kind of advertising.
• Martyrdom covers a multitude of sins.
• My books are like water; those of the great geniuses are wine. (Fortunately) everybody drinks water.
• Name the greatest of all inventors. Accident.
• Necessity is the mother of taking chances.
• Never put off till tomorrow what you can do day after tomorrow just as well.
• No sinner is ever saved after the first twenty minutes of a sermon.
• Noise proves nothing. Often a hen who has merely laid an egg cackles as if she laid an asteroid.
• Nothing so needs reforming as other people's habits.
• Often it does seem a pity that Noah and his party did not miss the boat.
• One of the most striking differences between a cat and a lie is that a cat has only nine lives.
• Only kings, presidents, editors, and people with tapeworms have the right to use the editorial "we."
• Only one thing is impossible for God: To find any sense in any copyright law on the planet.
• Patriot: the person who can holler the loudest without knowing what he is hollering about.
• Principles have no real force except when one is well-fed.
• Prosperity is the best protector of principle.
• Soap and education are not as sudden as a massacre, but they are more deadly in the long run.
• Substitute "damn" every time you're inclined to write "very"; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.
• The best way to cheer yourself up is to try to cheer somebody else up.
• The Christian's Bible is a drug store. Its contents remain the same, but the medical practice changes.
• The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.
• The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.
• The first of April is the day we remember what we are the other 364 days of the year.
• The human race has one really effective weapon, and that is laughter.
• The lack of money is the root of all evil.
• The man who is a pessimist before 48 knows too much; if he is an optimist after it, he knows too little.
• The more things are forbidden, the more popular they become.
• The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it.
• The most interesting information comes from children, for they tell all they know and then stop.
• The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.
• The right word may be effective, but no word was ever as effective as a rightly timed pause.
• The rule is perfect: in all matters of opinion our adversaries are insane.
• The trouble ain't that there is too many fools, but that the lightning ain't distributed right.
• The very ink with which history is written is merely fluid prejudice.
• The wit knows that his place is at the tail of a procession.
• There are basically two types of people. People who accomplish things, and people who claim to have accomplished things. The first group is less crowded.
• There are lies, damned lies and statistics.
• There are people who can do all fine and heroic things but one - keep from telling their happiness to the unhappy.
• There are several good protections against temptation, but the surest is cowardice.
• There are times when one would like to hang the whole human race, and finish the farce.
• There is no sadder sight than a young pessimist.
• Thousands of geniuses live and die undiscovered - either by themselves or by others.
• Thunder is good, thunder is impressive; but it is lightning that does the work.
• To be good is noble; but to show others how to be good is nobler and no trouble.
• To refuse awards is another way of accepting them with more noise than is normal.
• Truth is mighty and will prevail. There is nothing wrong with this, except that it ain't so.
• Truth is the most valuable thing we have. Let us economize it.
• Under certain circumstances, profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer.
• Water, taken in moderation, cannot hurt anybody.
• We have the best government that money can buy.
• What a good thing Adam had. When he said a good thing he knew nobody had said it before.
• 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.
• What is the difference between a taxidermist and a tax collector? The taxidermist takes only your skin.
• When a person cannot deceive himself the chances are against his being able to deceive other people.
• When angry, count to four; when very angry, swear.
• When I was younger I could remember anything, whether it happened or not.
• When in doubt tell the truth.
• When people do not respect us we are sharply offended; yet in his private heart no man much respects himself.
• When you fish for love, bait with your heart, not your brain.
• When your friends begin to flatter you on how young you look, it's a sure sign you're getting old.
• Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.
• Why is it that we rejoice at a birth and grieve at a funeral? It is because we are not the person involved.
• Wit is the sudden marriage of ideas which before their union were not perceived to have any relation.
• Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do. Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.
• Work is a necessary evil to be avoided.
• Wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been.
• You can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus