Mark Twain

There is a charm about the forbidden that makes it unspeakably desirable.

Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.

I have been complimented many times and they always embarrass me; I always feel that they have not said enough.

Plain question and plain answer make the shortest road out of most perplexities.

A crank is someone with a new idea – until it catches on.

Monarchies, aristocracies, and religions are all based upon that large defect in your race – the individual’s distrust of his neighbor, and his desire, for safety’s or comfort’s sake, to stand well in his neighbor’s eye. These institutions will always remain, and always flourish, and always oppress you, affront you, and degrade you, because you will always be and remain slaves of minorities. There was never a country where the majority of the people were in their secret hearts loyal to any of these institutions.

People do not deserve to have good writings; they are so pleased with the bad.

There are no conditions to which a person cannot grow accustomed, especially if he sees that everyone around him lives in the same way.

No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature. Good and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this; the only right is what is after my own constitution; the only wrong what is against it.

Power doesn’t corrupt people; people corrupt power.

Laughter is the greatest weapon we have and we, as humans, use it the least.

The best effort of a fine person is felt after we have left their presence.

Why level downward to our dullest perception always, and praise that as common sense? The commonest sense is the sense of men asleep, which they express by snoring.

Therefore if a man look sharply and attentively, he shall see Fortune; for though she be blind, yet she is not invisible.

It is the amends of a short and troublesome life, that doing good and suffering ill entitles man to a longer and better

Of course, money will do after its kind, and will steadily work to unspiritualize and unchurch the people to whom it was bequeathed.

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

All men are prepared to accomplish the incredible if their ideals are threatened.

Every great man, every successful man, no matter what the field of endeavor, has known the magic that lies in these words: every adversity has the seed of an equivalent or greater benefit.

If the Almighty were to rebuild the world and asked me for advice, I would have English Channels round every country. And the atmosphere would be such that anything which attempted to fly would be set on fire.

Nothing is beneath you if it is in the direction of your life.