Mark Twain

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

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

Don’t go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.

Honesty is the best policy – when there is money in it.

There it is: it doesn’t make any difference who we are or what we are, there’s always somebody to look down on! somebody to hold in light esteem, somebody to be indifferent about.

Public opinion is held in reverence. It settles everything. Some think it is the voice of God.

A man cannot be said to succeed in this life who does not satisfy one friend.

Learn to say “I don’t know.” If used when appropriate, it will be often.

What, then, is the true Gospel of consistency? Change. Who is the really consistent man? The man who changes. Since change is the law of his being, he cannot be consistent if he stick in a rut.

Because they did not see merit where they should have seen it, people, to express their regret, will go and leave a lot of money to the very people who will be the first to throw stones at the next person who has anything to say and finds a difficulty in getting a hearing.

We hate the kindness which we understand.

The flowery style is not unsuitable to public speeches or addresses, which amount only to compliment. The lighter beauties are in their place when there is nothing more solid to say; but the flowery style ought to be banished from a pleading, a sermon, or a didactic work.

The only thing that is ultimately real about your journey is the step that you are taking at this moment. That’s all there ever is.

Opposition may become sweet to a man when he has christened it persecution.

There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.

Suspicion is most often useless pain.

The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.

Not only must we be good, but we must also be good for something.

The best efforts of a fine person is felt after we have left their presence.

The greatest glory in living lies in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.

If man has good corn, or wood, or boards, or pigs to sell, or can make better chairs or knives, crucibles, or church organs, than anybody else, you will find a broad, hard-beaten road to his house, though it be in the woods.