Mark Twain

Don’t part with your illusions. When they are gone, you may still exist, but you have ceased to live.

A myriad of men are born; they labor and sweat and struggle; …they squabble and scold and fight; they scramble for little mean advantages over each other; age creeps upon them; infirmities follow; …those they love are taken from them, and the joy of life is turned to aching grief. It comes at last-the only unpoisoned gift earth ever had for them-and they vanish from a world where they were of no consequence, …a world which will lament them a day and forget them forever.

We are always too busy for our children; we never give them the time or interest they deserve. We lavish gifts upon them; but the most precious gift, our personal association, which means so much to them, we give grudgingly.

The most interesting information come from children, for they tell all they know and then stop.

Cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education.

In his private heart no man much respects himself.

I didn’t find my friends; the good Lord gave them to me.

Every one is a genius, more or less. No one is so physically sound that no part of him will be even a little unsound, and no one is so diseased but that some part of him will be healthy — so no man is so mentally and morally sound, but that he will be in part both mad and wicked; and no man is so mad and wicked but he will be sensible and honourable in part. In like manner there is no genius who is not also a fool, and no fool who is not also a genius.

Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.

Men are apt to mistake the strength of their feeling for the strength of their argument. The heated mind resents the chill touch and relentless scrutiny of logic.

Mementos of this world, in which the things worth being were so easily exchanged for the things worth having.

There is nothing that will kill a man so soon as having nobody to find fault with but himself.

Perhaps his might be one of the natures where a wise estimate of consequences is fused in the fires of that passionate belief which determines the consequences it believes in.

You cannot be a hero without being a coward.

Democracy is a form of government that substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.

Knowledge comes by eyes always open and working hands; and there is no knowledge that is not power.

Those people who will not be governed by God will be ruled by tyrants.

A weed is a plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered.

Do not bring people in your life who weigh you down. And trust your instincts … good relationships feel good. They feel right. They don’t hurt. They’re not painful. That’s not just with somebody you want to marry, but it’s with the friends that you choose. It’s with the people you surround yourselves with.

The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want and if they can’t find them, make them.

What fugitive from his country can also escape from himself.