Mark Twain

It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native criminal class except Congress.

It was wonderful to find America, but it would have been more wonderful to miss it.

What, sir, would the people of the earth be without woman? They would be scarce, sir, almighty scarce.

It is better to take what does not belong to you than to let it lie around neglected.

New Orleans food is as delicious as the less criminal forms of sin.

The people of those foreign countries are very, very ignorant. They looked curiously at the costumes we had brought from the wilds of America. They observed that we talked loudly at table sometimes. They noticed that we looked out for expenses and got what we conveniently could out of a franc, and wondered where in the mischief we came from. In Paris they just simply opened their eyes and stared when we spoke to them in French! We never did succeed in making those idiots understand their own language.

Learning to let go should be learned before learning to get. Life should be touched, not strangled. You’ve got to relax, let it happen at times, and at others move forward with it.

We gain the strength of the temptation we resist.

Life is the art of drawing sufficient conclusions from insufficient premises.

The most beautiful woman is the one who is never divulging, she knows what she is and everything else is worth her.

They that have grown old in a single state are generally found to be morose, fretful and captious; tenacious of their own practices and maxims; soon offended by contradiction or negligence; and impatient of any association but with those that will watch their nod, and submit themselves to unlimited authority.

In statesmanship get the formalities right, never mind about the moralities.

In literature the ambition of the novice is to acquire the literary language: the struggle of the adept is to get rid of it.

There must be what Mr. Gladstone many years ago called a blessed act of oblivion. We must all turn our backs upon the horrors of the past. We must look to the future. We cannot afford to drag forward across the years that are to come the hatreds and revenges which have sprung from the injuries of the past.

It is a miserable state of mind to have few things to desire and many things to fear.

Some are so very studious of learning what was done by the ancients that they know not how to live with the moderns.

Life is a perpetual instruction in cause and effect.

Baseball has the great advantage over cricket of being sooner ended.

I hate women because they always know where things are.

If government knew how, I should like to see it check, not multiply, the population. When it reaches its true law of action, every man that is born will be hailed as essential.

Superstition is to religion what astrology is to astronomy the mad daughter of a wise mother. These daughters have too long dominated the earth.