Mark Twain

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

There is a great deal of human nature in people.

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

To arrive at a just estimate of a renowned man’s character one must judge it by the standards of his time, not ours.

It takes an enemy and a friend, working together, to hurt you to the heart. The one to slander you, and the other to get the news to you.

Who prays for Satan? Who, in 1,800 years, has had the common humanity to pray for the one sinner that needed it most?

Do we not wile away moments of inanity or fatigued waiting by repeating some trivial movement or sound, until the repetition has bred a want, which is incipient habit?

He that reads and grows no wiser seldom suspects his own deficiency, but complains of hard words and obscure sentences, and asks why books are written which cannot be understood.

Amidst all the clutter, beyond all the obstacles, aside from all the static, are the goals set. Put your head down, do the best job possible, let the flak pass, and work towards those goals.

Columbus discovered no isle or key so lonely as himself.

The reward of one duty is the power to fulfill another.

Character building begins in our infancy and continues until death.

When we get to wishing a great deal for ourselves, whatever we get soon turns into mere limitation and exclusion.

People care more about being thought to have taste than about being thought either good, clever or amiable.

We have reached a point today where labor-saving devices are good only when they do not throw the worker out of his job.

I like not only to be loved, but also to be told that I am loved. I am not sure that you are of the same kind. But the realm of silence is large enough beyond the grave. This is the world of light and speech, and I shall take leave to tell you that you are very dear.

A man must consider what a rich realm he abdicates when he becomes a conformist.

Love and you shall be loved. All love is mathematically just, as much as the two sides of an algebraic equation.

Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh.

Rare virtues are like rare plants or animals, things that have not been able to hold their own in the world. A virtue to be serviceable must, like gold, be alloyed with some commoner but more durable metal.

That’s what a man wants in a wife, mostly; he wants to make sure one fool tells him he’s wise.