Mark Twain

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

When I was younger, I could remember anything, whether it had happened or not.

Religion was invented when the first con man met the first fool.

It is better to deserve honors and not have them than to have them and not deserve them.

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.

The first half of life consists of the capacity to enjoy without the chance; the last half consists of the chance without the capacity.

Do Good with what thou hast, or it will do thee no good.

Young people are fitter to invent than to judge; fitter for execution than for counsel; and more fit for new projects than for settled business.

Beautiful young people are accidents of nature, but beautiful old people are works of art.

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

If a man’s eye is on the Eternal, his intellect will grow.

At 70 years old, if I could give my younger self one piece of advice, It would be to use the phrase ‘f**k off’ much more frequently.

The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them.

Don’t think of yourself as indispensable or infallible. As Charles De Gaulle said, the cemeteries of the world are full of indispensable men.

It is only through labour and painful effort, by grim energy and resolute courage; that we move on to better things.

There are many humorous things in the world; among them, the white man’s notion that he is less savage than the other savages.

The sum of wisdom is that time is never lost that is devoted to work.

None of us will ever accomplish anything excellent or commanding except when he listens to this whisper which is heard by him alone.

Soap and education are not as sudden as a massacre, but they are more deadly in the long run. Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond; cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education.

I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened.

You sold me a dream and it shattered. I didn’t know how to put it back together again. So instead, I’m lovingly gluing those fragments anew with seams of gold, creating a vibrant new dream, rendering the broken strong and more than ever, breathtakingly beautiful.