Mark Twain

An average English word is four letters and a half. By hard, honest labor I’ve dug all the large words out of my vocabulary and shaved it down till the average is three and a half… I never write metropolis for seven cents, because I can get the same money for city. I never write policeman, because I can get the same price for cop…. I never write valetudinarian at all, for not even hunger and wretchedness can humble me to the point where I will do a word like that for seven cents; I wouldn’t do it for fifteen.

There is no such thing as the Queen’s English. The property has gone into the hands of a joint stock company and we own the bulk of the shares!

We have not the reverent feeling for the rainbow that a savage has, because we know how it is made. We have lost as much as we gained by prying into that matter.

A good memory and a tongue tied in the middle is a combination which gives immortality to conversation.

It is nobler to be good, and it is nobler to teach others to be good – and less trouble!

Let me make the superstitions of a nation and I care not who makes its laws or its songs either.

Every thought which genius and piety throw into the world alters the world.

Surely a long life must be somewhat tedious, since we are forced to call in so many trifling things to help rid us of our time, which will never return.

The liar’s punishment is, not in the least that he is not believed, but that he cannot believe anyone else.

I can be changed by what happens to me. But I refuse to be reduced by it.

There are still many causes worth sacrificing for, so much history yet to be made.

A crime persevered in a thousand centuries ceases to be a crime, and becomes a virtue. This is the law of custom, and custom supersedes all other forms of law.

That kind of life is most happy which affords us most opportunities of gaining our own esteem.

A healthy body is a guest chamber for the soul: a sick body is a prison.

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.

All professions are conspiracies against the laity.

To be great is to be misunderstood.

Men on their side must force themselves for a while to lay their notions by and begin to familiarize themselves with facts.

I have never accepted what many people have kindly said-namely that I inspired the nation. Their will was resolute and remorseless, and as it proved, unconquerable. It fell to me to express it.

It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinions; it is easy in solitude to live after your own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.

Avarice is generally the last passion of those lives of which the first part has been squandered in pleasure, and the second devoted to ambition. He that sinks under the fatigue of getting wealth, lulls his age with the milder business of saving it.