Mark Twain

Faith is believing what you know ain’t so.

It usually takes me more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech.

Life would be infinitely happier if we could only be born at the age of eighty and gradually approach eighteen.

It’s not the size of the dog in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the dog.

Apparently there is nothing that cannot happen today.

The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large mattertis the difference between the lightning-bug and the lightning.

All my life affection has been showered upon me, and every forward step I have made has been taken in spite of it.

A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is brave five minutes longer.

There is a sort of subjection which is the peculiar heritage of largeness and of love; and strength is often only another name for willing bondage to irremediable weakness.

The pleasure we feel in music springs from the obedience which is in it.

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.

Lying has a kind of respect and reverence with it. We pay a person the compliment of acknowledging his superiority whenever we lie to him.

Drunkenness spoils health, dismounts the mind, and unmans man. It reveals secrets, is quarrelsome, lascivious, impudent, dangerous, and mad.

The finest language is mostly made up of simple unimposing words.

In the beginning of a change the patriot is a scarce man, and brave, and hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a patriot.

It is possible to be free and loving no matter what your circumstances.

Well, dearie, men have to do some awfully mean things to keep up their respectability. But you can’t blame them for that, can you?

Out of intense complexities intense simplicities emerge.

A shoe that is too large is apt to trip one, and when too small, to pinch the feet. So it is with those whose fortune does not suit them.

Force may make hypocrites, but it can never make converts.

Lilac anemone, paper petals, turning tentatively to face a pale sun opening to reveal a lightness of being, a flash of gold, a fresh resilience, contented silence, the dawn of a new day.