Mark Twain

When your friends begin to flatter you on how young you look, it’s a sure sign you’re getting old.

Sacred cows make the best hamburger.

Do the right thing. It will gratify some people and astonish the rest.

Thousands of geniuses live and die undiscovered – either by themselves or by others.

I was exceedingly delighted with the waltz, and also with the polka. These differ in name, but there the difference ceases

Truth is mighty and will prevail. There is nothing wrong with this, except that it ain’t so.

How lovely the little river is, with its dark changing wavelets! It seems to me like a living companion while I wander along the bank, and listen to its low, placid voice…

Martyrdom covers a multitude of sins.

If a man knew anything, he would sit in a corner and be modest; but he is such an ignorant peacock, that he goes bustling up and down, and hits on extraordinary discoveries.

After a few months’ acquaintance with European coffee, one’s mind weakens, and his faith with it, and he begins to wonder if the rich beverage of home, with its clotted layer of yellow cream on top of it, is not a mere dream after all, and a thing which never existed.

Self-preservation is the first law of nature.

I dislike feeling at home when I am abroad.

Nature arms each man with some faculty which enables him to do easily some feat impossible to any other.

Each time you learn something new you must readjust the whole framework of your knowledge

Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life so. Aim above morality. Be not simply good, be good for something.

We would accomplish many more things if we did not think of them as impossible.

The superiority of some men is merely local. They are great because their associates are little.

It is sound judgment to put on a bold face and play your hand for a hundred times what it is worth; forty-nine times out of fifty nobody dares to call it, and you roll in the chips.

I have to live for others and not for myself: that’s middle-class morality.

No facts are to me sacred; none are profane; I simply experiment, an endless seeker, with no past at my back.

He has spent his life best who has enjoyed it most. God will take care that we do not enjoy it any more than is good for us.