Mark Twain

A home without a cat-and a well-fed, well-petted and properly revered cat-may be a perfect home, perhaps, but how can it prove title?

There are German songs which can make a stranger to the language cry.

Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life. The conviction of the rich that the poor are happier is no more foolish than the conviction of the poor that the rich are.

We are always too busy for our children; we never give them the time or interest they deserve. We lavish gifts upon them; but the most precious gift, our personal association, which means so much to them, we give grudgingly.

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.

We are discreet sheep; we wait to see how the drove is going, and then go with the drove.

The people are to be taken in small doses.

Every other author may aspire to praise; the lexicographer can only hope to escape reproach, and even this negative recompense has been yet granted to very few.

True irreverence is disrespect for another man’s god.

Patience makes lighter What sorrow may not heal.

All Excess is ill: But Drunkenness is of the worst Sort. It spoils Health, dismounts the Mind, and unmans Men: It reveals Secrets, is Quarrelsome, Lascivious, Impudent, Dangerous and Mad. In fine, he that is drunk is not a Man: Because he is so long void of Reason, that distinguishes a Man from a Beast.

Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion. What a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate.

Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man.

True friendship can afford true knowledge. It does not depend on darkness and ignorance.

The masses have no habit of self reliance or original action.

The light which puts out our eyes is darkness to us. Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star.

The ear is the avenue to the heart.

If I knew for a certainty that a man was coming to my house with the conscious design of doing me good, I should run for my life.

Individually, we are one drop. Together, we are an ocean.

Out of Plato come all things that are still written and debated about among men of thought.

Security will produce danger.