Mark Twain

Pessimism is only the name that men of weak nerve give to wisdom.

The man who is a pessimist before 48 knows too much; if he is an optimist after it, he knows too little.

The older we grow the greater becomes our wonder at how much ignorance one can contain without bursting one’s clothes.

We need not worry so much about what man descends from; it’s what he descends to that shames the human race.

If you have nothing to say, say nothing.

Public opinion is held in reverence. It settles everything. Some think it is the voice of God.

For truth is precious and divine, too rich a pearl for carnal swine.

Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened.

Truth is mighty and will prevail. There is nothing wrong with this, except that it ain’t so.

Truth will always be truth, regardless of lack of understanding, disbelief or ignorance.

The truth is sometimes a hard pill to swallow. It sometimes causes us difficulties at home and abroad. It is sometimes used by our enemies in attempts to hurt us. But the American people are entitled to it, nonetheless.

If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.

Any fool can tell the truth, but it requires a man of some sense to know how to lie well.

Tell me anyway–Maybe I can find the truth by comparing the lies.

There’s a world of difference between truth and facts. Facts can obscure truth.

It is a pleasure to stand upon the shore, and to see ships tost upon the sea: a pleasure to stand in the window of a castle, and to see a battle and the adventures thereof below: but no pleasure is comparable to standing upon the vantage ground of truth… and to see the errors, and wanderings, and mists, and tempests, in the vale below.

There is no such source of error as the pursuit of truth.

The lawyer’s truth is not Truth, but consistency or a consistent expediency.

Truth is so hard to tell, it sometimes needs fiction to make it plausible.

Let them look up in the sky then…! if they must be so blind, that cannot see the truth in broad daylight, but must have the whole world in darkness to see the conceit of the stars…

Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn’t.