Mark Twain

It is just like man’s vanity and impertinence to call an animal dumb because it is dumb to his dull perceptions.

Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn’t.

Life does not consist mainly, or even largely, of facts and happenings. It consists mainly of the storm of thought that is forever flowing through one’s head.

There is a great deal of human nature in people.

A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.

To get the full value of joy you must have someone to divide it with.

Cruelty would be delicious if one could only find some sort of cruelty that didn’t really hurt.

Method goes far to prevent trouble in business: for it makes the task easy, hinders confusion, saves abundance of time, and instructs those that have business depending, both what to do and what to hope.

As there is a use in medicine for poisons, so the world cannot move without rogues.

The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.

Promise, large promise, is the soul of an advertisement.

Dear to us are those who love us… but dearer are those who reject us as unworthy, for they add another life; they build a heaven before us whereof we had not dreamed, and thereby supply to us new powers out of the recesses of the spirit, and urge us to new and unattempted performances.

Humor is mankind’s greatest blessing.

What you can’t pay back you pay forward.

The generative energy, which, when we are loose, dissipates and makes us unclean, when we are continent invigorates and inspires us. Chastity is the flowering of man; and what are called Genius, Heroism, Holiness, and the like, are but various fruits which succeed it.

I believe in Michelangelo, Velasquez, and Rembrandt; in the might of design, the mystery of color, the redemption of all things by Beauty everlasting, and the message of Art that has made these hands blessed. Amen. Amen.

The only failure one should fear, is not hugging to the purpose they see as best.

My chief want in life is someone who shall make me do what I can.

Ask for what you want and be prepared to get it!

Why should we be cowed by the name of Action?

No man can taste the fruits of autumn while he is delighting his scent with the flowers of spring.