Mark Twain

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

There is a charm about the forbidden that makes it unspeakably desirable.

By law of periodical repetition, everything which has happened once must happen again and again – and not capriciously, but at regular periods, and each thing in its own period, not another’s and each obeying its own law.

There are two types of speakers, those that are nervous and those that are liars.

Let us not be too particular; it is better to have old secondhand diamonds than none at all.

We have the best government that money can buy.

Should you find yourself in a chronically leaking boat, energy devoted to changing vessels is likely to be more productive than energy devoted to patching leaks.

The beginning of compunction is the beginning of a new life.

It is one of the superstitions of the human mind to have imagined that virginity could be a virtue.

The intellectual man requires a fine bait; the sots are easily amused. But everybody is drugged with his own frenzy, and the pageant marches at all hours, with music and banner and badge.

The time has come to shed this skin. Its cloying inconvenience doesn’t fit me anymore. My new attire strikes color, shine, shadow, makes noise, and may put your teeth on edge. Tough sh–. Get used to it. I’m inviting you to step into your fear and dance with life.

It appears to be a law that you cannot have a deep sympathy with both man and nature.

I do not hesitate to read all good books in translations. What is really best in any book is translatable – any real insight or broad human sentiment.

Failure is success if we learn from it.

All the things that truly matter, beauty, love, creativity, joy and inner peace arise from beyond the mind.

The quickest way to become troubled is to be concerned with what people are gonna say about your life and your work.

Never mistake knowledge for wisdom. One helps you make a living; the other helps you make a life.

They that deny a God destroy man’s nobility; for certainly man is of kin to the beasts by his body; and, if he be not of kin to God by his spirit, he is a base and ignoble creature.

It’s your life-but only if you make it so.

I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.

Insurrection is an art, and like all arts has its own laws.