Mark Twain

Civilization is a limitless multiplication of unnecessary necessities.

I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did. I said I didn’t know.

A person with a new idea is a crank until the idea succeeds.

Often it does seem a pity that Noah and his party did not miss the boat.

We have not all had the good fortune to be ladies. We have not all been generals, or poets, or statesmen; but when the toast works down to the babies, we stand on common ground.

When we remember that we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained.

Flowers are a proud assertion that a ray of beauty out-values all the utilities of the world.

I only wish that ordinary people had an unlimited capacity for doing harm; then they might have an unlimited power for doing good.

Suppose you were an idiot, and suppose you were a member of congress; but I repeat myself.

People who can’t be witty exert themselves to be devout and affectionate.

Slavery is an institution for converting men into monkeys.

Man is a shrewd inventor, and is ever taking the hint of a new machine from his own structure, adapting some secret of his own anatomy in iron, wood, and leather, to some required function in the work of the world.

Patience – the gift of being able to see past the emotion.

Difficulties mastered are opportunities won.

This is your time and it feels normal to you but really there is no normal. There’s only change, and resistance to it and then more change.

The Mona Lisa, the Mona Lisa….Leonardo had eye trouble….Art couldn’t explain it….But now we’re safe, since science can explain it. Maybe Milton wrote Paradise Lost because he was blind? And Beethoven wrote the Ninth Symphony because he was deaf…

You’ve got a big, big problem if you get caught up in what people say. If you’re gonna live for what people say, you might as well lay down and forget it. Because it doesn’t work that way.

Death is not extinguishing the light; it is only putting out the lamp because the dawn has come.

Gross and obscure natures, however decorated, seem impure shambles; but character gives splendor to youth, and awe to wrinkled skin and gray hairs.

Men talk as if victory were something fortunate. Work is victory.

It is the only sensual pleasure without vice.