Mark Twain

Forget and forgive. This is not difficult when properly understood. It means forget inconvenient duties, then forgive yourself for forgetting. By rigid practice and stern determination, it comes easy.

A man’s character may be learned from the adjectives which he habitually uses in conversation.

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.

The Christian’s Bible is a drug store. Its contents remain the same, but the medical practice changes.

Fortune knocks at every man’s door once in a life, but in a good many cases the man is in a neighboring saloon and does not hear her.

I think a compliment ought to always precede a complaint, where one is possible, because it softens resentment and insures for the complaint a courteous and gentle reception.

The only way for a woman to provide for herself decently is for her to be good to some man that can afford to be good to her.

There is one topic peremptorily forbidden to all well-bred, to all rational mortals, namely, their distempers. If you have not slept, or if you have slept, or if you have headache, or sciatica, or leprosy, or thunder-stroke, I beseech you, by all angels, to hold your peace, and not pollute the morning.

Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.

To deny people their human rights is to challenge their very humanity.

Be virtuous and you will be eccentric.

Speech is power: speech is to persuade, to convert, to compel. It is to bring another out of his bad sense into your good sense.

Believe nothing against another but on good authority; and never report what may hurt another, unless it be a greater hurt to some other to conceal it.

A man’s style is his mind’s voice. Wooden minds, wooden voices.

The golden moments in the stream of life rush past us and we see nothing but sand; the angels come to visit us, and we only know them when they’re gone.

I teach that all men are mad.

If we open a quarrel between the past and the present, we shall find we have lost the future.

The self divides into ten billion distinct illuminating spirits. Distinguish these without falling into names and classifications.

Sir, he was dull in company, dull in his closet, dull everywhere. He was dull in a new way, and that made many people think him great.

Houses are built to live in, and not to look on: therefore let use be preferred before uniformity.

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.