Mark Twain

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.

Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear.

Just the omission of Jane Austen’s books alone would make a fairly good library out of a library that hadn’t a book in it.

Let us be grateful to Adam, our benefactor. He cut us out of the blessing of idleness and won for us the curse of labor.

All you need to be a success is ignorance and self confidence.

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

Young people are fitter to invent than to judge; fitter for execution than for counsel; and more fit for new projects than for settled business.

What really flatters a man is that you think him worth flattering.

Barring that natural expression of villainy which we all have, the man looked honest enough.

Humor is mankind’s greatest blessing.

Melancholy, indeed, should be diverted by every means but drinking.

The things most people want to know about are usually none of their business.

A man’s ignorance sometimes is not only useful, but beautiful-while his knowledge, so called, is oftentimes worse than useless, besides being ugly.

The trouble ain’t that there is too many fools, but that the lightning ain’t distributed right.

Logic is a poor guide compared with custom.

The human race was always interesting and we know by its past that it will always continue so, monotonously.

Let us consider that we are all partially insane. It will explain us to each other; it will unriddle many riddles; it will make clear and simple many things which are involved in haunting and harassing difficulties and obscurities now.

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.

That which we call character is a reserved force which acts directly by presence, and without means. It is conceived of as a certain undemonstrable force, a familiar or genius, by whose impulses the man is guided, but whose counsels he cannot impart.

Don’t think of retiring from the world until the world will be sorry that you retire. I hate a fellow whom pride or cowardice or laziness drive into a corner, and who does nothing when he is there but sit and growl. Let him come out as I do, and bark.

I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.