Mark Twain

A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval.

October. This is one of the peculiarly dangerous months to speculate in stocks in. The others are July, January, September, April, November, May, March, June, December, August, and February.

Continuous improvement is better than delayed perfection.

We are chameleons, and our partialities and prejudices change place with an easy and blessed facility, and we are soon wonted to the change and happy in it.

Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.

I refused to attend his funeral. But I wrote a very nice letter explaining that I approved of it.

No pain, no palm; no thorns, no throne; no gall, no glory; no cross, no crown.

A graceful and pleasing figure is a perpetual letter of recommendation.

Courage is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm.

The measure of who we are is what we do with what we have.

Culture is one thing and varnish is another.

People who can’t be witty exert themselves to be devout and affectionate.

Piety practiced in solitude, like the flower that blooms in the desert, may give its fragrance to the winds of heaven, and delight those unbodied spirits that survey the works of God and the actions of men; but it bestows no assistance upon earthly beings, and however free from taints of impurity, yet wants the sacred splendor of beneficence.

Everyone has been made for some particular work, and the desire for that work has been put in every heart.

Winning is not a sometime thing; it’s an all the time thing. You don’t win once in a while… you don’t do things right once in a while… you do them right all the time. Winning is habit.

However mean your life is, meet it and live it: do not shun it and call it hard names. Cultivate poverty like a garden herb, like sage. Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends. Things do not change, we change. Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts.

Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.

Adam was but human-this explains it all. He did not want the apple for the apple’s sake, he wanted it only because it was forbidden. The mistake was in not forbidding the serpent; then he would have eaten the serpent.

We do not have to become heroes overnight. Just a step at a time, meeting each thing that comes up, seeing it as not as dreadful as it appears, discovering that we have the strength to stare it down.

There are truths which are not for all men, nor for all times.

In a battle all you need to make you fight is a little hot blood and the knowledge that it’s more dangerous to lose than to win.