Mark Twain

“What is there that confers the noblest delight? What is that which swells a man's breast with pride above that which any other experience can bring to him? Discovery!”

“I have achieved my seventy years in the usual way: by sticking strictly to a scheme of life which would kill anybody else... I will offer here, as a sound maxim, this: That we can't reach old age by another man's road.”

“All publishers are Columbuses. The successful author is their America. The reflection that they-like Columbus-didn't discover what they expected to discover, and didn't discover what they started out to discover, doesn't trouble them. All they remember is that they discovered America; they forget that they started out to discover some patch or corner of India.”

“Ah, if he could only die temporarily!”

“My own luck has been curious all my literary life; I never could tell a lie that anyone would doubt, nor a truth that anybody would believe.”

“Do good when you can, and charge when you think they will stand it.”

“Pessimism is only the name that men of weak nerve give to wisdom.”

“After all these years, I see that I was mistaken about Eve in the beginning; ... I should be sorry to have that voice fall silent and pass out of my life.”

“Loyalty to the country always. Loyalty to the government when it deserves it.”

“If they [the dead] should speak, it would be found that in matters of opinion no departed person was exactly what he had passed for in life. They would realise, deep down, that they, and whole nations along with them, are not really what they seem to be-and never can be.”

“The man who isn't a pessimist is a damned fool.”

“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.”

“The man who is ostentatious of his modesty is twin to the statue that wears a fig-leaf.”

“I have only one moral precept; never smoke more than five cigars at a time.”

“I simply can't resist a cat, particularly a purring one.”

“Once I talked to the inmates of an insane asylum in Hartford. I have talked to idiots a thousand times, but only once to the insane.”

“Give a man a reputation as an early riser and he can sleep 'til noon.”

“Armor is heavy, yet it is a proud burden, and a man standeth straight in it.”

“I like the truth sometimes, but I don't care enough for it to hanker after it.”

“You feel mighty free and easy and comfortable on a raft.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

“I am technically "boss" of the family which I am carrying along-but I am grateful to know that it is only technically - that the real authority rests on the other side of the house. It is placed there by a beneficent Providence, who foresaw before I was born, or, if he did not, he has found it out since - that I am not in any way qualified to travel alone.”

“It is better to be alone than unwelcome. - Eve”

“I told that girl, in the kindest, gentlest way, that I could not consent to deliver judgment upon any one's manuscript, because an individual's verdict was worthless. It might underrate a work of high merit and lose it to the world, or it might overrate a trashy production and so open the way for its infliction upon the world. I said that the great public was the only tribunal competent to sit in judgment upon a literary effort, and therefore it must be best to lay it before that tribunal in the outset, since in the end it must stand or fall by that mighty court's decision any way.”

“Suddenly the nickel-clad horse takes the bit in its mouth and goes slanting for the curbstone defying all prayers and all your powers to change its mind - your heart stands still, your breath hangs fire, your legs forget to work.”

“All war must be just the killing of strangers against whom you feel no personal animosity; strangers whom, in other circumstances, you would help if you found them in trouble, and who would help you if you needed it.”

“Some things you can't find out; but you will never know you can't by guessing and supposing: no, you have to be patient and go on experimenting until you find out that you can't find out.”

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

“First catch your Boer, then kick him.”

“Low comedies are written for the drawing-room, the kitchen and the stable, and if you cut out the kitchen and the stable the drawing-room can't support the play by itself.”

“When you catch an adjective, kill it. No, I don't mean utterly, but kill most of them--then the rest will be valuable. They weaken when they are close together. They give strength when they are far apart.”

“Two days overdue, THE WORLD'S WORK has not reached me. Pray make a note of this. I would rather not have to resort to violence.”

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

“They do say that when a man starts down hill everybody is ready to help him with a kick, and I suppose it is so.”

“Who knows, he may grow up to be President someday, unless they hang him first!" Aunt Polly about Tom Sawyer”

“Learning softeneth the heart and breedeth gentleness and charity.”

“You may say organize, organize, organize; but there may be so much organization that it will interfere with the work to be done.”

“Repartee is something we think of twenty-four hours too late.”

“If one is honest there is no need to remember.”

“Books are for people who wish they were somewhere else.”

“In the small town of Hannibal, Missouri, when I was a boy, everybody was poor, but didn't know it; and everybody was comfortable and did know it.”

“the more I know about people, the better I like my dogs.”

“If all men were rich, all men would be poor.”

“Man is kind enough when he is not excited by religion”

“My experience with horses is that they never throw away a chance to go lame.”

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

“Courage is not the lack of fear. It is acting in spite of it.”

“When in doubt tell the truth. It will confound your enemies and astound your friends.”