Mark Twain

There is no distinctly American criminal class – except Congress.

When I was fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have him around. When I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years.

I can teach anybody how to get what they want out of life. The problem is that I can’t find anybody who can tell me what they want.

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.

All generalizations are false, including this one.

I am a democrat only on principle, not by instinct – nobody is that. Doubtless some people say they are, but this world is grievously given to lying.

Whosoever is delighted in solitude is either a wild beast or a god.

There is nothing you can say in answer to a compliment. I have been complimented myself a great many times, and they always embarrass me-I always feel that they have not said enough.

I am certainly not one of those who need to be prodded. In fact, if anything, I am the prod.

I see my path, but I don’t know where it leads. Not knowing where I’m going is what inspires me to travel it.

What you can’t pay back you pay forward.

We lie in the lap of immense intelligence.

Give me insight into today and you may have the antique and future worlds.

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

Wit makes its own welcome, and levels all distinctions. No dignity, no learning, no force of character, can make any stand against good wit.

We are armed with language adequate to describe each leaf of the filed, but not to describe human character.

This merriment of parsons is mighty offensive.

Is the parent better than the child into whom he has cast his ripened being? Whence, then, this worship of the past?

The virtue in most request is conformity.

Wrong does not cease to be wrong because the majority share in it.

It is not he who gains the exact point in dispute who scores most in controversy – but he who has shown the better temper.