Mark Twain

The person that had took a bull by the tail once had learnt sixty or seventy times as much as a person that hadn’t, and said a person that started in to carry a cat home by the tail was getting knowledge that was always going to be useful to him, and warn’t ever going to grow dim or doubtful. Chances are, he isn’t likely to carry the cat that way again, either. But if he wants to, I say let him!

France has neither winter nor summer nor morals. Apart from these drawbacks it is a fine country.

As an example to others, and not that I care for moderation myself, it has always been my rule never to smoke when asleep and never to refrain when awake.

We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it – and stop there; lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot stove-lid. She will never sit down on a hot stove-lid again – and that is well; but also she will never sit down on a cold one anymore.

Martyrdom covers a multitude of sins.

All I say is, kings is kings, and you got to make allowances. Take them all around, they’re a mighty ornery lot. It’s the way they’re raised.

In human intercourse the tragedy begins, not when there is misunderstanding about words, but when silence is not understood.

Men over forty are no judges of a book written in a new spirit.

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

The possibilities are numerous once we decide to act and not react.

An honest man is always a child.

Virtue is like a rich stone, best plain set.

People wish to be settled. It is only as far as they are unsettled that there is any hope for them.

I was not the lion, but it fell to me to give the lion’s roar.

I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the community and as long as I live it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can.

Thus, by every device from the stick to the carrot, the emaciated Austrian donkey is made to pull the Nazi barrow up an ever-steepening hill.

All those moments are alive in us today. We may not visit them anymore, very often, but we carry them in our DNA, our blood, our bones; informing the breadth and beauty of who we now are; our lesson to be lived.

A mother’s yearning feels the presence of the cherished child even in the degraded man.

There is no comparison between that which is lost by not succeeding and that which is lost by not trying.

The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be.

We have all seen with a sense of nausea the abject, squalid, shameless avowal made in the Oxford Union. We are told that we ought not to treat it seriously. The Times talked of the childrens hour. I disagree. It is a very disquieting and disgusting symptom. One can almost feel the curl of contempt upon the lips of the manhood of Germany, Italy, and France when they read the message sent out by Oxford University in the name of Young England. Let them be assured that it is not the last word. But before they blame, as blame they should, these callow ill-tutored youths, they must be sure that they have not been set a bad example by people much older and much higher up.