Mark Twain

Classic – A book which people praise and don’t read.

Man – a creature made at the end of the week’s work when God was tired.

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.

Monarchies, aristocracies, and religions are all based upon that large defect in your race – the individual’s distrust of his neighbor, and his desire, for safety’s or comfort’s sake, to stand well in his neighbor’s eye. These institutions will always remain, and always flourish, and always oppress you, affront you, and degrade you, because you will always be and remain slaves of minorities. There was never a country where the majority of the people were in their secret hearts loyal to any of these institutions.

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

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.

You can free yourself from aging by reinterpreting your body and by grasping the link between belief and biology.

What greater thing is there for two human souls than to feel that they are joined – to strengthen each other – to be at one with each other in silent unspeakable memories.

Great people are they who see that spiritual is stronger than any material force, that thoughts rule the world.

Through want of enterprise and faith men are where they are, buying and selling and spending their lives like servants.

There is nothing that will kill a man so soon as having nobody to find fault with but himself.

There is a great deal of human nature in people.

I don’t need an alarm clock. My ideas wake me.

There is no finer investment for any community than putting milk into babies.

The Country is both the Philosopher’s Garden and his Library, in which he Reads and Contemplates the Power, Wisdom and Goodness of God.

We are born believing. A man bears beliefs as a tree bears apples.

In a man’s letters you know, Madam, his soul lies naked, his letters are only the mirror of his breast, whatever passes within him is shown undisguised in its natural process. Nothing is inverted, nothing distorted, you see systems in their elements, you discover actions in their motives.

Pleasure that is obtained by unreasonable and unsuitable cost, must always end in pain.

Many might go to Heaven with half the labor they go to hell.

We all really basically have a lot of magic … it’s only those of us that choose to accept it that really understand it.

Don’t seek, don’t search, don’t ask, don’t knock, don’t demand — relax!