Mark Twain

Only one thing is impossible for God: To find any sense in any copyright law on the planet.

A human being has a natural desire to have more of a good thing than he needs.

If you don’t read the newspaper, you’re uninformed. If you read the newspaper, you’re mis-informed.

In religion and politics people’s beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination, from authorities who have not themselves examined the questions at issue but have taken them at second-hand from other non-examiners, whose opinions about them were not worth a brass farthing.

A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.

The Pause; that impressive silence, that eloquent silence, that geometrically progressive silence which often achieves a desired effect where no combination of words, however so felicitous, could accomplish it.

Every one goes astray, but the least imprudent are they who repent the soonest.

Fear always springs from ignorance.

It isn’t making mistakes that’s critical; it’s correcting them and getting on with the principal task.

My love for you was like a poem I wrote; one that I disregarded as average. Torn out, thrown away to the rubbish heap, waiting; wishing to be picked up and appreciated by someone else, for the masterpiece that it is.

A true friend is somebody who can make us do what we can.

Without ambition one starts nothing. Without work one finishes nothing. The prize will not be sent to you. You have to win it. The man who knows how will always have a job. The man who also knows why will always be his boss.

Humanity has unquestionably one really effective weapon

The possibility of stepping into a higher plane is quite real for everyone. It requires no force or effort or sacrifice. It involves little more than changing our ideas about what is normal.

I’ve learned that making a ‘living’ is not the same thing as ‘making a life’.

I was afraid that by observing objects with my eyes and trying to comprehend them with each of my other senses I might blind my soul altogether.

The purity men love is like the mists which envelope the earth, and not like the azure ether beyond.

I would advise you Sir, to study algebra, if you are not already an adept in it: your head would be less muddy, and you will leave off tormenting your neighbors about paper and packthread, while we all live together in a world that is bursting with sin and sorrow.

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

Leisure may be defined as free activity, labor as compulsory activity. Leisure does what it likes, labor does what it must, the compulsion being that of Nature, which in these latitudes leaves men no choice between labor and starvation.

Property is an intellectual production. The game requires coolness, right reasoning, promptness, and patience in the players.