Mark Twain

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.

I was exceedingly delighted with the waltz, and also with the polka. These differ in name, but there the difference ceases

His money is twice tainted: taint yours and taint mine.

What do we call love, hate, charity, revenge, humanity, forgiveness? Different results of the master impulse, the necessity of securing one’s self-approval.

Man will do many things to get himself loved, he will do all things to get himself envied.

To do something, say something, see something, before anybody else – these are things that confer a pleasure compared with which other pleasures are tame and commonplace, other ecstasies cheap and trivial.

We’re comic. We’re all comics. We live in a comic time. And the worse it gets the more comic we are.

Heaven is the work of the best and kindest men and women. Hell is the work of prigs, pedants and professional truth-tellers. The world is an attempt to make the best of Heaven and Hell.

A good end cannot sanctify evil means; nor must we ever do evil that good may come of it.

There is this benefit in brag, that the speaker is unconsciously expressing his own ideal. Humor him by all means; draw it all out, and hold him to it.

All generalizations are false, including this one.

My life is a struggle.

The basis of good manners is self-reliance.

If you aren’t fired with enthusiasm, you will be fired with enthusiasm.

All great truths begin as blasphemies.

Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.

Courage: the most important of all the virtues because without courage, you can’t practice any other virtue consistently.

Train hard, turn up, run your best and the rest will take care of itself.

Socialists think profits are a vice; I consider losses the real vice.

Different taste in jokes is a great strain on the affections.

All my life affection has been showered upon me, and every forward step I have made has been taken in spite of it.