Mark Twain

The very ink with which history is written is merely fluid prejudice.

Peace by persuasion has a pleasant sound, but I think we should not be able to work it. We should have to tame the human race first, and history seems to show that that cannot be done.

As an example to others, and not that I care for moderation myself, it has always been my rule never to smoke when asleep and never to refrain when awake.

Substitute ‘damn’ every time you’re inclined to write ‘very;’ your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.

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.

To do something, say something, see something, before anybody else – these are things that confer a pleasure compared with which other pleasures are tame and commonplace, other ecstasies cheap and trivial.

A mother’s yearning feels the presence of the cherished child even in the degraded man.

When you do the wrong thing, knowing it is wrong, you do so because you haven’t developed the habit of effectively controlling or neutralizing strong inner urges that tempt you, or because you have established the wrong habit and don’t know how to eliminate them effectively.

Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.

We are happier in many ways when we are old than when we were young. The young sow wild oats. The old grow sage.

Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker on this planet.

The lofty pine is oftenest shaken by the winds; High towers fall with a heavier crash; And the lightning strikes the highest mountain.

There’s nothing you can know that isn’t known.

This is the comfort of the godly: the grave cannot hold them, and they live as soon as they die. For death is no more than turning us over from time to eternity.

All the things that truly matter, beauty, love, creativity, joy and inner peace arise from beyond the mind.

Tell me who your heroes are and I’ll tell you who you’ll turn out to be.

All the great things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope.

The very ink with which history is written is merely fluid prejudice.

People grow through experience if they meet life honestly and courageously. This is how character is built.

People who can’t be witty exert themselves to be devout and affectionate.

Use, do not abuse; neither abstinence nor excess ever renders man happy.