Mark Twain

What is the difference between a taxidermist and a tax collector? The taxidermist takes only your skin

If man had created man, he would be ashamed of his performance.

There isn’t a single human characteristic that can be safely labeled as American.

In Nevada, for a time, the lawyer, the editor, the banker, the chief desperado, the chief gambler, and the saloon-keeper occupied the same level of society, and it was the highest.

Write without pay until somebody offers to pay you. If nobody offers within three years, sawing wood is what you were intended for.

What a good thing Adam had. When he said a good thing, he knew nobody had said it before.

It’s terribly unfair that we should have to suffer like this.

Progress is a new season and the rule of progress is everything in its season.

Spring is the time of plans and projects.

Change can come in either of two important ways: Start behaving positively or stop behaving negatively.

Our care should not be to have lived long as to have lived enough.

I don’t care about anyone not liking me, you b**thes barely like yourselves.

Stars are good too. I wish I could get some to put in my hair. But I suppose I never can. You would be surprised to find how far off they are, for they do not look it. When they first showed last night I tried to knock some down with a pole, but it didn’t reach, which astonished me. Then I tried clods till I was all tired out, but I never got one. I did make some close shots, for I saw the black blot of the clod sail right into thee midst of the golden clusters forty or fifty times, just barely missing them, and if I could’ve held out a little longer, maybe I could’ve got one.

Don’t worry about things you cannot alter.

No matter how flat you make a pancake, it’s still got two sides.

Experience shows that the frequent use of severe punishment has never rendered a people better. The death of a criminal is a less effective means of restraining crimes than the permanent example of a man deprived of his liberty during the whole of his life to make amends for the injury he has done to the public.

Time is what we want most, but what we use worst.

You learn from a conglomeration of the incredible past — whatever experience gotten in any way whatsoever.

You philosophers are lucky men. You write on paper and paper is patient. Unfortunate Empress that I am, I write on the susceptible skins of living beings.

Time you enjoy wasting, was not wasted.

When you once get an idea in which you believe with all your heart, work it out.