Mark Twain

Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.

I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did. I said I didn’t know.

What a wee little part of a person’s life are his acts and his words! His real life is led in his head, and is known to none but himself. All day long, the mill of his brain is grinding, and his thoughts, not those of other things, are his history. These are his life, and they are not written. Everyday would make a whole book of 80,000 words – 365 books a year. Biographies are but the clothes and buttons of the man – the biography of the man himself cannot be written.

When a person cannot deceive himself the chances are against his being able to deceive other people.

There is no God, no universe, no human race, no earthly life, no heaven, no hell. It is all a dream, a grotesque and foolish dream. Nothing exists but you. And you are but a thought -a vagrant thought, a useless thought, a homeless thought, wandering forlorn among the empty eternities!

I was young and foolish then; now I am old and foolisher.

Coming together is the beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success.

Blood banks are all closed; you can’t use others to keep you warm.

People have the right to think and say whatever they want to. But you have the right not to take it to heart, and not to react.

I grew up in a very masculine environment. So I was around a lot of men, my brothers and their friends. There was just a lot of guys around.

The person who reads too much and uses his brain too little will fall into lazy habits of thinking.

[on Diana’s Death] I remember just feeling completely numb, disorientated, dizzy.

Anyone who does anything useful will not go unpaid.

Things are as they are. Looking out into the universe at night, we make no comparisons between right and wrong stars, nor between well and badly arranged constellations.

Everybody should have the opportunity to do and be everything they can be.

People have to talk about something just to keep their voice boxes in working order so they’ll have good voice boxes in case there’s ever anything really meaningful to say.

What a piece of work is man! how noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in form and moving how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! In apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals!

Somebody once said we never know what is enough until we know what’s more than enough.

The meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away.

I don’t think I’ve made mistakes. Every time somebody said I made a mistake, they do the polls and my numbers go up, so I guess I haven’t made any mistakes.

There are four things every person has more of than they know; sins, debt, years, and foes.