Mark Twain

Pity is for living, envy is for dead.

I could have become a soldier if I had waited; I knew more about retreating than the man who invented retreating.

A man’s house burns down. The smoking wreckage represents only a ruined home that was dear through years of use and pleasant associations. By and by, as the days and weeks go on, first he misses this, then that, then the other thing. And when he casts about for it he finds that it was in that house. Always it is an essential – there was but one of its kind. It cannot be replaced. It was in that house. It is irrevocably lost. It will be years before the tale of lost essentials is complete, and not till then can he truly know the magnitude of his disaster.

Never learn to do anything. If you don’t learn, you will always find someone else to do it for you.

The man who is ostentatious of his modesty is twin to the statue that wears a fig-leaf.

Part of the secret of a success in life is to eat what you like and let the food fight it out inside.

I shall strike the stars with my unlifted head.

The best armor is to keep out of gunshot.

Kings in this should imitate God, their mercy should be above their works.

Possession isn’t nine-tenths of the law. It’s nine-tenths of the problem.

The more experiments you make the better.

The only things one can admire at length are those one admires without knowing why.

Is not a patron, my lord, one who looks with unconcern on a man struggling for life in the water, and, when he has reached ground, encumbers him with help? The notice which you have been pleased to take of my labors, had it been early, had been kind; but it has been delayed till I am indifferent, and cannot enjoy it; till I am solitary, and cannot impart it; till I am known, and do not want it.

I never knew a writer yet who took the smallest pains with his style and was at the same time readable.

He is useless on top of the ground; he ought to be under it, inspiring the cabbages.

The tallest trees are most in the power of the winds, and ambitious men of the blasts of fortune.

If you don’t like the weather in New England, just wait a few minutes.

Every stroke our fury strikes is sure to hit ourselves at last.

A crank is someone with a new idea – until it catches on.

You are all fundamentalists with a top dressing of science. That is why you are the stupidest of conservatives and reactionists in politics and the most bigoted of obstructionists in science itself. When it comes to getting a move on you are all of the same opinion: stop it, flog it, hang it, dynamite it, stamp it out.

The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization.