Twain, Mark
"Don't go around saying the world owes you a living; the world owes you nothing; it was here first."
"Do the right thing. It will gratify some people and astonish the rest."
"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did. So throw off the bowlines, Sail away from the safe harbour. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream."
"We are discreet sheep; we wait to see how the drove is going, and then go with the drove."
"Whenever you find you are on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect."
"It usually takes more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech."
"Man is the only animal that blushes - or needs to."
"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics."
"Any emotion, if it is sincere, is involuntary."
"Those who don't read have no advantage over those who can't."
"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 twenty-one, I was astonished at how much the old man had learnt in seven years."
"Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself."
"Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first."
"It is good sportsmanship to not pick up lost golf balls while they are still rolling."
"Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society."
"I did not attend his funeral; but I wrote a nice letter saying I approved of it."
"Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please."
"The human race has one really effective weapon, and that is laughter."
"Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest."
"To succeed in life, you need two things: ignorance and confidence."
"I was gratified to be able to answer promptly. I said I don't know."
"Always do right- this will gratify some and astonish the rest."
"Few things are harder to put up with than a good example."
"Truth is our most valuable commodity - let us economise."
"Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company."
"Don't let school interfere with your education."
"Necessity is the mother of taking chances."
"Golf is a good walk spoiled."
"Humour 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"
"It is better to deserve honours and not have them than to have them and not to deserve them."
"Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life. (The conviction of the rich that the poor are happier is no more foolish than the conviction of the poor that the rich are.)"
"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."
"The secret source of humour itself is not joy, but sorrow. There is no humour in heaven."
"Man is the only animal that blushes. Or needs to."
"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"
"Names are not always what they seem. The common Welsh name Bzjxxllwcp is pronounced Jackson."
"Nothing seems to please a fly so much as to be taken for a currant, and if it can be baked in a cake and palmed off on the unwary, it dies happy."
"There is no distinctly American criminal class, except Congress."
"To cease smoking is the easiest thing I ever did. I ought to know because I've done it a thousand times."
"I know I can quit smoking because I've done it a thousand times."
"Arguments have no chance against petrified training; they wear it as little as the waves wear a cliff."
"The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them."
"Good breeding consists in concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of the other person."
"A round man cannot be expected to fit in a square hole right away. He must have time to modify his shape."
"Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear."
"Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond; cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education."
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education."
"We Americans... bear the ark of liberties of the world."
"When in doubt tell the truth."
"It is better to deserve honours and not have them than to have them and not deserve them."
"The existing phrasebooks are inadequate. They are well enough as far as they go, but when you fall down and skin your leg they don't tell you what to say."
"It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native criminal class except Congress."
"A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on it's shoes."
"All you need in life is ignorance and confidence, and then success is sure."
"Man - a creature made at the end of the week's work when God was tired."
"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."
"Always acknowledge a fault. This will throw those in authority off their guard and give you an opportunity to commit more."
"Morals are an acquirement - like music, like a foreign language, like piety, poker, paralysis - no man is born with them."
"What a good thing Adam had. When he said a good thing, he knew nobody had said it before."
"To promise not to do a thing is the surest way in the world to make a body want to go and do that very thing."
"There is an old-time toast which is golden for its beauty. 'When you ascend the hill of prosperity may you not meet a friend.'"
"Prosperity is the surest breeder of insolence I know."
"The educated Southerner has no use for an 'R', except at the beginning of a word."
"There are several good protections against temptation, but the surest is cowardice."
"Truth is the most valuable thing we have. Let us economise it."
"In Boston they ask, how much does he know? In New York, how much is he worth? In Philadelphia, who were his parents?"
"Wit is the sudden marriage of ideas which before their union were not perceived to have any relation."
"The report of my death was an exaggeration." - cable from London to a New York newspaper
"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." - Following the Equator, Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar
"To be good is noble; but to show others how to be good is nobler and no trouble." - Following the Equator, Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar
"Classic: A book which people praise and don't read." - Following the Equator, Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar
"Everyone is a moon, and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody." - Following the Equator, Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar
"Let us be thankful for the fools. But for them the rest of us could not succeed." - Following the Equator, Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar
"They spell it Vinci and pronounce it Vinchy; foreigners always spell better than they pronounce." - Innocents Abroad
"Loyalty to petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul." - Inscription beneath his bust in the Hall of Fame.
"A baby is an inestimable blessing and bother." - letter (1876)
"Familiarity breeds contempt - and children." - Notebooks
"Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example." - Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar(1894)
"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." - Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar(1894)
"Let us endeavour to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry." - Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar(1894)
"It is not best that we should all think alike; it is difference of opinion that make horse races." - Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar(1894)
"When angry, count four; when very angry, swear." - Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar(1894)
"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." - Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar(1894)
"Habit is habit, and not to be flung out of the window by any man, but coaxed downstairs a step at a time." - Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar(1894)
"Facts, or what a man believes to be facts, are always delightful. . . . Get your facts first, and . . . then you can distort `em as much as you please." - quoted in Rudyard Kipling's From Sea to Sea
". . . a classic - something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read." - speech (1900)
"It was enough to make a body ashamed of the human race." - spoken by Huck Finn, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
"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." - What Is Man?(1906)
