Mark Twain

Work is a necessary evil to be avoided.

There is nothing in the world like a persuasive speech to fuddle the mental apparatus.

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.

We are always too busy for our children; we never give them the time or interest they deserve. We lavish gifts upon them; but the most precious gift, our personal association, which means so much to them, we give grudgingly.

You can’t depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.

The radical of one century is the conservative of the next. The radical invents the views. When he has worn them out, the conservative adopts them.

There are many victories worse than a defeat.

When death comes it is never our tenderness that we repent from, but our severity.

Vulgarity in a king flatters the majority of the nation.

If we open a quarrel between the past and the present, we shall find we have lost the future.

That is the whole secret of successful fighting. Get your enemy at a disadvantage; and never, on any account, fight him on equal terms.

That things are changed, and that nothing really perishes, and that the sum of matter remains exactly the same, is sufficiently certain.

We must hold a man amenable to reason for the choice of his daily craft or profession. It is not an excuse any longer for his deeds that they are the custom of his trade. What business has he with an evil trade?

Common sense is genius dressed in its working clothes.

I recall a most ingenious piece in a Wisconsin quarterly some years ago in which ‘The Recognitions’ ’ debt to ‘Ulysses’ was established in such minute detail I was doubtful of my own firm recollection of never having read ‘Ulysses.

Better be a nettle in the side of your friend than his echo.

The time has come to shed this skin. Its cloying inconvenience doesn’t fit me anymore. My new attire strikes color, shine, shadow, makes noise, and may put your teeth on edge. Tough sh–. Get used to it. I’m inviting you to step into your fear and dance with life.

In art, the hand can never execute anything higher than the heart can imagine.

There is no value in life except what you choose to place upon it and no happiness in any place except what you bring to it yourself.

Solvency is maintained by means of a national debt, on the principle, If you will not lend me the money, how can I pay you?

Good breeding, a union of kindness and independence.