Mark Twain

I have been through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened.

When I was fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have him around. When I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years.

One of the most striking differences between a cat and a lie is that a cat has only nine lives.

The holy passion of friendship is of so sweet and steady and loyal and enduring a nature that it will last through a whole lifetime, if not asked to lend money.

If you eat a frog first thing in the morning, the rest of your day will be wonderful.

I smoke in moderation, only one cigar at a time.

Dying is a troublesome business: there is pain to be suffered, and it wrings one’s heart; but death is a splendid thing –a warfare accomplished, a beginning all over again, a triumph. You can always see that in their faces.

How does it happen, Maecenas, that no one is content with that lot of which he has chosen or which chance has thrown his way, but praises those who follow a different course?

Right is right even if everyone is against it and wrong is wrong even if everyone is for it.

Every burned book or house enlightens the world; every suppressed or expunged word reverberates through the earth from side to side.

I showed my appreciation of my native land in the usual Irish way: by getting out of it as soon as I possibly could.

We mustn’t be stiff and stand-off, you know. We must be thoroughly democratic, and patronize everybody without distinction of class.

Courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality which guarantees all others.

Our necessities are few, but our wants are endless.

Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add color to my sunset sky.

Wit is the sudden marriage of ideas which, before their union, were not perceived to have any relation.

Do not do unto others as you would that they should do unto you. Their tastes may not be the same.

To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts.

The country life is to be preferred, for there we see the works of God; but in cities little else but the works of men. And the one makes a better subject for contemplation than the other.

Believing that I was born for the service of mankind, and regarding the care of the commonwealth as a kind of common property which, like the air and the water, belongs to everybody, I set myself to consider in what way mankind might be best served, and what service I was myself best fitted by nature to perform.

The maxim of the British people is Business as usual.