Mark Twain

I cannot see how a man of any large degree of humorous perception can ever be religious – except he purposely shut the eyes of his mind and keep them shut by force.

A myriad of men are born; they labor and sweat and struggle; …they squabble and scold and fight; they scramble for little mean advantages over each other; age creeps upon them; infirmities follow; …those they love are taken from them, and the joy of life is turned to aching grief. It comes at last-the only unpoisoned gift earth ever had for them-and they vanish from a world where they were of no consequence, …a world which will lament them a day and forget them forever.

I don’t know of a single foreign product that enters this country untaxed, except the answer to prayer.

The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.

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

Let us endeavor so to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.

The Holy Roman Empire is neither Holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire.

Facts are stubborn, but statistics are more pliable.

The camera can represent flesh so superbly that, if I dared, I would never photograph a figure without asking that figure to take its clothes off.

If we do not maintain Justice, Justice will not maintain us.

How can one be well…when one suffers morally?

Every person who has mastered a profession is a skeptic concerning it.

The more you know the less you understand.

The advice that is wanted is commonly not welcome and that which is not wanted, evidently an effrontery.

The heart is forever inexperienced.

Every man passes his life in the search after friendship.

The progress of rivers to the ocean is not so rapid as that of man to error.

Nothing is ever done in this world until men are prepared to kill one another if it is not done.

All the reasonings of men are not worth one sentiment of women.

The nose of the bulldog has been slanted backwards so that he can breathe without letting go.

All the diversity, all the charm, and all the beauty of life are made up of light and shade.