Mark Twain

No sinner is ever saved after the first twenty minutes of a sermon.

Don’t part with your illusions. When they are gone, you may still exist, but you have ceased to live.

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

If the desire to kill and the opportunity to kill came always together, who would escape hanging?

Happiness ain’t a thing in itself -it’s only a contrast with something that ain’t pleasant. And so, as soon as the novelty is over and the force of the contrast dulled, it ain’t happiness any longer, and you have to get something fresh.

The billiard table is better than the doctor.

The applause of a single human being is of great consequence.

Friends are true Twins in Soul; they Sympathize in every thing, and have the Love and Aversion. One is not happy without the other, nor can either of them be miserable alone. As if they could change Bodies, they take their turns in Pain as well as in Pleasure; relieving one another in their most adverse Conditions.What one enjoys, the other cannot Want. Like the Primitive Christians, they have all things in common, and no Property but in one another.

I know not, Madam, that you have a right, upon moral principles, to make your readers suffer so much.

Some people have a foolish way of not minding, or pretending not to mind, what they eat. For my part, I mind my belly very studiously, and very carefully; for I look upon it, that he who does not mind his belly, will hardly mind anything else.

Humility like the darkness, reveals the heavenly lights.

Death is but crossing the world, as friends do the seas; they live in one another still. For they must needs be present, that love and live in that which is omnipresent. In this divine glass, they see face to face; and their converse is free as well as pure. This is the comfort of friends, that though they may be said to die, yet their friendship and society are, in the best sense, ever present, because immortal.

More knowledge may be gained of a man’s real character by a short conversation with one of his servants than from a formal and studied narrative, begun with his pedigree and ended with his funeral.

The ordinary man is an anarchist. He wants to do as he likes. He may want his neighbor to be governed, but he himself doesn’t want to be governed. He is mortally afraid of government officials and policemen.

Duties are not performed for duty’s sake, but because their neglect would make the man uncomfortable. A man performs but one duty -the duty of contenting his spirit, the duty of making himself agreeable to himself.

Sir, they are a race of convicts, and ought to be thankful for anything we allow them short of hanging.

The pen is the tongue of the mind.

No change of circumstances can repair a defect of character.

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

In fine, he that is drunk is not a Man: Because he is so long void of Reason, that distinguishes a Man from a Beast.

Never be bored, and you will never be boring.