Mark Twain

“Good friends, good books, and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.”

“Never put off till tomorrow what may be done day after tomorrow just as well.”

“The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.”

“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.”

“′Classic′ - a book which people praise and don't read.”

“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.”

“In a good bookroom you feel in some mysterious way that you are absorbing the wisdom contained in all the books through your skin, without even opening them.”

“I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did. I said I didn’t know.”

“Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to reform (or pause and reflect).”

“A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.”

“I did not attend his funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it.”

“If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything.”

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

“Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't.”

“Never tell the truth to people who are not worthy of it.”

“I've lived through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened.”

“I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.”

“What would men be without women? Scarce, sir...mighty scarce.”

“Education: the path from cocky ignorance to miserable uncertainty.”

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

“The easy confidence with which I know another man's religion is folly teaches me to suspect that my own is also.”

“I must have a prodigious quantity of mind; it takes me as much as a week sometimes to make it up.”

“The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.”

“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.”

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

“The man who does not read has no advantage over the man who cannot read.”

“The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter. ’tis the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.”

“God created war so that Americans would learn geography.”

“Thunder is good, thunder is impressive; but it is lightning that does the work.”

“The man who is a pessimist before 48 knows too much; if he is an optimist after it, he knows too little.”

“Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example.”

“If you don't read the newspaper, you're uninformed. If you read the newspaper, you're mis-informed.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Don’t go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.”

“But who prays for Satan? Who, in eighteen centuries, has had the common humanity to pray for the one sinner that needed it most?”

“Name the greatest of all inventors. Accident.”

“Many a small thing has been made large by the right kind of advertising.”

“Always do what is right. It will gratify half of mankind and astound the other.”

“To refuse awards is another way of accepting them with more noise than is normal.”

“Everything has its limit - iron ore cannot be educated into gold.”

“The lack of money is the root of all evil.”

“When your friends begin to flatter you on how young you look, it's a sure sign you're getting old.”

“Every time you stop a school, you will have to build a jail. What you gain at one end you lose at the other. It's like feeding a dog on his own tail. It won't fatten the dog.”

“Human nature is all alike.”

“The secret of getting ahead is getting started.”

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

“It is by the goodness of god that in our country we have those 3 unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them.”

“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 stovelid. 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.”

“It usually takes me two or three days to prepare an impromptu speech.”

“Education: that which reveals to the wise, and conceals from the stupid, the vast limits of their knowledge.”

“The pause - that impressive silence, that eloquent silence, that geometrically progressive silence which often achieves a desired effect where no combination of words, howsoever felicitous, could accomplish it.”

“The main difference between a cat and a lie is that a cat only has nine lives.”

“Each of us knows it all, and knows he knows it all—the rest, to a man, are fools and eluded. One man knows there is a hell, the next one knows there isn’t; one man knows monarchy is best, the next one knows it isn’t; one man knows high tariff is right, the next man knows it isn’t; one man knows ther...”

“My books are water; those of the great geniuses is wine. Everybody drinks water.”

“Soap and education are not as sudden as a massacre, but they are more deadly in the long run.”

“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.”

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

“Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don't mind, it doesn't matter.”

“Never pick a fight with people who buy ink by the barrel.”

“Nothing so needs reforming as other people's habits.”

“The less a man knows the bigger the noise he makes and the higher the salary he commands.”

“There ain't no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than to travel with them.”

“To be busy is man's only happiness.”

“There are several good protections against temptation, but the surest is cowardice.”

“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 inexcusable traitor, both to yourself and to your country, let men label you as they ma...”

“I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened.”

“It isn't so astonishing, the number of things that I can remember, as the number of things I can remember that aren't so.”

“I don't give a damn for a man that can only spell a word one way.”

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

“I am opposed to millionaires, but it would be dangerous to offer me the position.”