Brother Samuel Langhorne Clemens: A Missouri Freemason

Mark Twain's Maxims and Selected Quotations

An uneasy conscience is a hair in the mouth.
All the talk used to be about doing people good, now it is about doing people.
At 50 a man can be an ass without being an optimist but not an optimist without being as ass.
Always acknowledge a fault frankly. This will throw those in authority off their guard and give you opportunity to commit more.
All schools, all colleges, have two great functions; to confer, and to conceal, valuable knowledge. The theological knowledge which they conceal cannot justly be regarded as less valuable than that which they reveal. That is, when a man is buying a basket of strawberries it can profit him to know that the bottom half of it is rotten.
Better a broken promise than none at all.
Benefit of clergy: Half-rate on the railroad.
The burnt child shuns the fire. Until next day.
Balloon: Thing to take meteroric observations and commit suicide with.
By and by when each nation has 20,000 battleships and 5,000,000 soldiers we shall all be safe and the wisdom of statesmanship will stand confirmed.
Circumstances make man, not man circumstances.
Civilization is a limitless multiplication of unnecessary necessaries.
Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence in society.
Do your duty today and repent tomorrow.
Do good when you can, and charge when you think they will stand it.
Difference between savage and civilized man: one is painted, the other gilded.
Do not put off till tomorrow what can be put off till day-after-tomorrow just as well.
Do not tell fish stories where the people know you; but particularly, don't tell them where they know the fish.
Etiquette requires us to admire the human race.
Everybody's private motto: It's better to be popular than right.
Every man is wholly honest to himself and to God, but not to any one else.
Geological time is not money.
Good wine needs no bush; a jug is the thing.
God's noblest work? Man. Who found it out? Man.
Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.
Golden rule: Made of hard metal so it could stand severe wear, it not being known at that time that butter would answer.
Honesty was the best policy.
Honesty: The best of all the lost arts.
Heroine: Girl who is perfectly charming to live with, in a book.
Have a place for everything and keep the thing somewhere else. This is not advice, it is custom.
Heroine: Girl in a book who is saved from drowning by a hero and marries him next week, but if it was to be over again ten years later it is likely she would rather have a life-belt and he would rather have her have it.
Hero: Person in a book who does things which he can't and girl marries him for it.
It is wiser to find out than to suppose.
In literature imitations do not imitate.
It is best to read the weather forecast before we pray for rain.
It is hard enough luck being a monarch, without being a target also.
It is a solemn thought: Dead, the noblest man's meat is inferior to pork.
If we had less statesmanship we could get along with fewer battleships.
It is not best to use our morals weekdays, it gets them out of repair for Sunday.
It is better to take what does not belong to you than to let it lie around neglected.
Is a person's public and private opinion the same? It is thought there have been instances.
It is the foreign element that commits our crimes. There is no native criminal class except Congress.
It is a wise child that knows its own father, and an unusual one that unreservedly approves of him.
It is not likely that any complete life has ever been lived which was not a failure in the secret judgment of the person that lived it.
It is sound statesmanship to add two battleships every time our neighbor adds one and two stories to our skyscrapers every time he piles a new one on top of hisn to threaten our light. There is no limit to this soundness but the sky.
Let us save the to-morrows for work.
The lack of money is the root of all evil.
The low level which commercial morality has reached in America is deplorable. We have humble God fearing Christian men among us who will stoop to do things for a million dollars that they ought not to be willing to do for less than 2 millions.
Morals consist of political morals, commercial morals, ecclesiastical morals, and morals.
Necessity is the mother of "taking chances".
Nothing is made in vain, but the fly came near it.
No man is straitly honest to any but himself and God.
The new political gospel: Public office is private graft.
Never tell the truth to people who are not worthy of it.
Nothing incites to money-crimes like great poverty or great wealth.
None but an ass pays a compliment and asks a favor at the same time. There are many asses.
Nelson would have been afraid of ten thousand fleas, but a flea wouldn't be afraid of ten thousand Nelsons.
Optimist: Day-dreamer in his small clothes.
Optimist: Day-dreamer more elegantly spelled.
Optimist: Person who travels on nothing from nowhere to happiness.
Obscurity and a competence. That is the life that is best worth living.
The ordinary chestnut can beget a sickly and reluctant laugh, but it takes a horse chestnut to fetch the gorgeous big horse-laugh.
An occultation of Venus is not half so difficult as an eclipse of the Sun, but because it comes seldom the world thinks it's a grand thing.
Pessimist: The optimist who didn't arrive.
Prosperity is the best protector of principle.
Prophecy: Two bull's eyes out of a possible million.
Public servant: Persons chosen by the people to distribute the graft.
Patriot: The person who can holler the loudest without knowing what he is hollering about.
The real yellow peril: Gold.
Slang in a woman's mouth is not obscene, it only sounds so.
Senator: Person who makes laws in Washington when not doing time.
Some of us cannot be optimists, but all of us can be bigamists.
There is no sadder sight than a young pessimist, except an old optimist.
Taking the pledge will not make bad liquor good, but it will improve it.
To create man was a quaint and original idea, but to add the sheep was tautology.
There are many scapegoats for our blunders, but the most popular one is Providence.
To be good is noble, but to show others how to be good is nobler, and no trouble.
The time to begin writing an article is when you have finished it to your satisfaction.
The trouble ain't that there is too many fools, but that the lightning ain't distributed right.
That George could refrain from telling the lie is not the remarkable feature, but that he could do it off-hand, that way.
Vote: The only commodity that is peddleable without a license.
We all live in the protection of certain cowardices which we call our principles.
What is human life? The first third a good time; the rest remembering about it.
Work and play are words used to describe the same thing under differing conditions.
When a man arrives at great prosperity God did it: when he falls into disaster he did it himself.
We can't reach old age by another man's road. My habits protect my life but they would assassinate you.
What is the difference between a taxidermist and a tax collector? The taxidermist takes only your skin.
We often feel sad in the presence of music without words; and often more than that in the presence of music without music.
We are always more anxious to be distinguished for a talent which we do not possess, than to be praised for the fifteen which we do possess.
Wherefore being all of one mind, we do highly resolve that government of the grafted by the grafter for the grafter shall not perish from the earth.
You can straighten a worm, but the crook is in him and only waiting.