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Mark Twain



  • Barring that natural expression of villainy which we all have, the man looked honest enough.



  • Work and play are words used to describe the same thing under differing conditions.



  • In his private heart no man much respects himself.



  • What a good thing Adam had - when he said a good thing, he know nobody had said it before.



  • Go to bed early, get up early - this is wise.



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



  • Make it a point to do something every day that you don't want to do. This is the golden rule for acquiring the habit of doing your duty without pain.



  • The fragrance of the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.



  • Let us be thankful for the fools. But for them the rest of us could not succeed.



  • Ethical man - a Christian holding four aces.



  • It is a wise child that knows its own father, and an unusual one that unreservedly approves of him.



  • Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear.



  • If you tell the truth you don't have to remember anything.



  • In prayer we call ourselves ''worms of the dust'', but it is only on a sort of tacit understanding that the remark shall not be taken at par.



  • Biographies are but the clothes and buttons of the man - the biography of the man himself cannot be written.



  • Name the greatest of all inventors: Accident.



  • Everyone is a moon and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody.



  • Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand.



  • Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.



  • He liked to like people, therefore people liked him.



  • Necessity is the mother of ''taking chances''.



  • Heaven goes by favor; if it went by merit, you would stay out and your dog would go in.



  • Keep away for people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.



  • There are those who would misteach us that to stick in a rut is consistency - and a virtue, and that to climb out of the rut is inconsistency - and a vice.



  • Action speaks louder than words but not nearly as often.



  • To be busy is man's only happiness.



  • There are several good protections against temptation, but the surest is cowardice.



  • Of all God's creatures there is only one that cannot be made the slave of the lash. That one is the cat. If man could be crossed with the cat, it would improve man, but it would deteriorate the cat.



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



  • Put all thine eggs in one basket and - watch that basket.



  • It is better to deserve honours and not have them, than to have them and not deserve them.



  • Grief can take care of itself, but to get the full value of a joy you must have somebody to divide it with.



  • Each man must for himself alone decide what is right and what is wrong, which course is patriotic and which isn't. You cannot shirk this and be a man.



  • Always do right. This will gratify some people, and astonish the rest.



  • Fewer things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example.



  • Wit it the sudden marriage of ideas which, before their union,were not perceived to have any relation.



  • I asked Tom if countries always apologized when they had done wrong, and he said: ''Yes: the little one does.''



  • I was sorry to have my name mentioned as one of the great authors, because they have a sad habit of dying off Chaucer is dead, Spenser is dead, so is Milton, so is Shakespeare, and I'm not feeling so well myself.



  • The human race is a race of cowards; and I am not only marching in the procession but carrying a banner.



  • I have made it a rule never to smoke more than one cigar at a time.



  • I have too much respect for the truth to drag it out on every trifling occasion.



  • We may not pay Satan reverence, for that would be indiscreet, but we can at least respect his talents.



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



  • Man - a creature made at the end of the week's work when God was tired.



  • Let us so live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.



  • The Creator made Italy with designs by Michelangelo.



  • A man is never more truthful than when he acknowledges himself a liar.



  • The best way to cheer yourself is to try to cheer somebody else up.



  • The pause - that impressive silence, that geometrically progressive silence which often achieves a desired effect where no combination of words, howsoever felicitous, could accomplish it.



  • Loyalty to petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul.



  • In certain trying circumstances, urgent circumstances, desperate circumstances, profanity furnishes a relief denied even to prayer.



  • From his cradle to the grave, a man never does a single thing which has any first and foremost object but one - to secure peace of mind, spiritual comfort for himself .



  • Golf is a good walk spoiled.



  • Noise proves nothing. Often a her who has merely laid an egg cackles as if she had laid an asteroid.



  • There is no unhappiness like the misery of sighting land again after a cheerful, careless voyage.



  • We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it - and stop there, lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot stove - lid. She Will never sit down on a hot stove - lid again - and that is well; but also she will never sit down on a cold one anymore.



  • Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see.



  • There ain't no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than to travel with them.



  • In statesmanship get formalities right, never mind about the moralities.



  • Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow - mindedness.



  • When I was younger, I could remember anything, whether it had happened or not.



  • You can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.



  • A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval.



  • The proper office of a friend is to side with you when you are in the wrong. Nearly everybody will side with you when you are in the right.



  • I am opposed to millionaires, but it would be dangerous to offer me the position.



  • I can live for two months on a good compliment.



  • Good breeding consists in concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of the other person.



  • I wish to become rich, so that I can instruct the people and glorify honest poverty a little, like those kind - hearted, fat, benevolent people do.



  • Love seems the swiftest but it is the slowest of all growths. No man or woman really knows what perfect love is until they have been married a quarter of a century.



  • Wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been.



  • Richard Wagner, a musician who wrote music which is better than it sounds.



  • Ain't we got all the fools in town on our side? And ain't that a big enough majority for any town? 



  • Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do, and play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.



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



  • When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty - one, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years.



  • Love is madness; if thwarted it develops fast.



  • You can tell German wine from vinegar...by the label.



  • It takes your enemy and your friend, working together to hurt you to the heart; the one to slander you and the other to get the news to you.



  • I was seldom able to see an opportunity until it had ceased to be one.



  • I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened.



  • We are chameleons, and our partialities and prejudices change place with an easy and blessed facility.



  • Habit is habit, and not to be thrown out of the window by any man, but coaxed downstairs a step at a time.



  • A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way.



  • Get your facts first, and then you can distort 'em as much as you please.



  • The worst loneliness is not to be comfortable with yourself.



  • The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them.



  • Have a place for everything and keep the things somewhere else. That is not advice, it is merely a custom.



  • It isn't so astonishing, the number of things that I can remember, as the number of things I can remember that aren't so.



  • To be satisfied with what one has, that is wealth. As long as one sorely needs a certain additional amount, that man isn't rich.



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