Mark Twain

Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it’s time to pause and reflect.

Most people are bothered by those passages of Scripture they do not understand, but the passages that bother me are those I do understand.

Fortune knocks at every man’s door once in a life, but in a good many cases the man is in a neighboring saloon and does not hear her.

Fleas can be taught nearly anything that a Congressman can.

To cease smoking is the easiest thing I ever did; I ought to know because I’ve done it a thousand times.

Never argue with a fool, onlookers may not be able to tell the difference.

Happiness is a perfume which you cannot pour on someone without getting some on yourself.

While we ourselves are the living graves of murdered beasts, how can we expect any ideal conditions on this earth?

Does he council you better who bids you, Money, by right means, if you can: but by any means, make money?

He has not lived badly whose birth and death has been unnoticed by the world.

There are various orders of beauty, causing men to make fools of themselves in various styles… but there is one order of beauty which seems made to turn the heads not only of men, but of all intelligent mammals, even of women. It is a beauty like that of kittens, or very small downy ducks making gentle rippling noises with their soft bills, or babies just beginning to toddle and to engage in conscious mischief -a beauty with which you can never be angry, but that you feel ready to crush for inability to comprehend the state of mind into which it throws you.

There is nothing to fear except fear it’s self.

I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: “O Lord make my enemies ridiculous.” And God granted it.

Prosperity discovers vice, adversity discovers virtue.

When many demons are struggling inside you, the one that you feed is the one that will become the strongest. You alone are responsible for what you feed.

Here’s the thing: the world is not going to issue you an engraved invitation to this life.

One must be poor to know the luxury of giving!

Clogged with yesterday’s excess, the body drags the mind down with it.

The world will only, in the end, follow those who have despised as well as served it.

Our instructed vagrancy, which has hardly time to linger by the hedgerows, but runs away early to the tropics, and is at home with palms and banyans –which is nourished on books of travel, and stretches the theatre of its imagination to the Zambesi.

We do what we must, and call it by the best names.