Mark Twain

Why was the human race created? Or at least why wasn’t something creditable created in place of it? God had His opportunity. He could have made a reputation. But no, He must commit this grotesque folly – a lark which must have cost Him a regret or two when He came to think it over and observe effects.

Biographies are but the clothes and buttons of the man. The biography of the man himself cannot be written.

Fueling your body is a process… The secret of getting ahead is getting started.

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

I take my only exercise acting as a pallbearer at the funerals of my friends who exercise regularly.

A man’s house burns down. The smoking wreckage represents only a ruined home that was dear through years of use and pleasant associations. By and by, as the days and weeks go on, first he misses this, then that, then the other thing. And when he casts about for it he finds that it was in that house. Always it is an essential – there was but one of its kind. It cannot be replaced. It was in that house. It is irrevocably lost. It will be years before the tale of lost essentials is complete, and not till then can he truly know the magnitude of his disaster.

A lot of power and bravery is practice. And some of that is taking the risk to try and be at the table. And then when you’re at the table, taking that first risk to open your mouth and risk being rejected.

Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted… but to weigh and consider.

You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late.

Lack of money is the root of all evil.

We have not all had the good fortune to be ladies. We have not all been generals, or poets, or statesmen; but when the toast works down to the babies, we stand on common ground.

The most heterogeneous ideas are yoked by violence together; nature and art are ransacked for illustrations, comparisons, and allusions; their learning instructs, and their subtlety surprises; but the reader commonly thinks his improvement dearly bought and, though he sometimes admires, is seldom pleased.

Nothing makes the earth seem so spacious as to have friends at a distance; they make the latitudes and longitudes.

The only things one can admire at length are those one admires without knowing why.

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

My own experience and development deepen everyday my conviction that our moral progress may be measured by the degree in which we sympathize with individual suffering and individual joy.

Do the thing and you will have the power. But they that do not the thing, had not the power.

If a man sits down to think, he is immediately asked if has a headache.

A Man in Business must put up many Affronts, if he loves his own Quiet.

Failure after long perseverance is much grander than never to have a striving good enough to be called a failure.

Better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than to open it and remove all doubt.