Mark Twain

The blunting effects of slavery upon the slaveholder’s moral perceptions are known and conceded the world over; and a priveleged class, an aristocracy, is but a band of slaveholders under another name.

Continuous improvement is better than delayed perfection.

Prophesy is a good line of business, but it is full of risks.

The secret source of humour itself is not joy, but sorrow. There is no humour in heaven.

One may make their house a palace of sham, or they can make it a home, a refuge.

You perceive I generalize with intrepidity from single instances. It is the tourist’s custom.

Before enlightenment; chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment; chop wood, carry water.

He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.

Buddhist practice is simply a system directed to the one end of lessening the suffering of life.

Zen has no business with ideas.

I believe a man is better anchored who has a belief in the Supreme Being.

You’re just left with yourself all the time, whatever you do anyway. You’ve got to get down to your own God in your own temple. It’s all down to you, mate.

If you are unable to find the truth right where you are, where else do you expect to find it?

To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.

I would like to believe there is a God, but I think it is better to say I’m not sure there is a God and live your life with kindness and respect for people than to say I know there is a God and then do bad things,

You will not be punished for your anger, you will be punished by your anger.

You’ve got to have something to eat and a little love in your life before you can hold still for any damn body’s sermon on how to behave.

I find it interesting that the meanest life, the poorest existence, is attributed to God’s will, but as human beings become more affluent, as their living standard and style begin to ascend the material scale, God descends the scale of responsibility at a commensurate speed.

Harmonizing opposites by going back to their source is the distinctive quality of the Zen attitude, the Middle Way: embracing contradictions, making a synthesis of them, achieving balance.

Which is it, is man one of God’s blunders or is God one of man’s?

I’m a bit superstitious about certain things, like what shoes to wear. If I wear the wrong shoes, the whole day may go wrong. Or if I don’t get to the bottom of the stairs before the door closes – stupid little things like that. Then I also have all the normal ones, like don’t walking under ladders and so on.