Mark Twain

When angry, count to four; when very angry, swear.

The older we grow the greater becomes our wonder at how much ignorance one can contain without bursting one’s clothes.

What is the most rigorous law of our being? Growth. No smallest atom of our moral, mental, or physical structure can stand still a year. It grows – it must grow; nothing can prevent it.

There are people who can do all fine and heroic things but one – keep from telling their happiness to the unhappy.

To succeed in the other trades, capacity must be shown; in the law, concealment of it will do.

The radical of one century is the conservative of the next. The radical invents the views. When he has worn them out, the conservative adopts them.

The lofty pine is oftenest shaken by the winds; High towers fall with a heavier crash; And the lightning strikes the highest mountain.

Never mistake knowledge for wisdom. One helps you make a living; the other helps you make a life.

In eternity there is indeed something true and sublime. But all these times and places and occasions are now and here. God himself culminates in the present moment and will never be more divine in the lapse of the ages. Time is but a stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it, but when I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. Its thin current slides away but eternity remains.

I am ready to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter.

When I was as you are now, towering in the confidence of twenty-one, little did I suspect that I should be at forty-nine, what I now am.

He that fails in his endeavors after wealth or power will not long retain either honesty or courage.

We shape our dwellings, and afterwards our dwellings shape us.

Distance has the same effect on the mind as on the eye.

Shall I not have intelligence with the earth? Am I not partly leaves and vegetable mould myself.

Life loves to be taken by the lapel and told: “I’m with you kid. Let’s go.”

She was not quite what you would call refined. She was not quite what you would call unrefined. She was the kind of person that keeps a parrot.

Cities force growth and make people talkative and entertaining, but they also make them artificial.

Why do you treat me as they do, as though I were exactly what I want to be. Why do we treat people that way?

A continual feast of commendation is only to be obtained by merit or by wealth: many are therefore obliged to content themselves with single morsels, and recompense the infrequency of their enjoyment by excess and riot, whenever fortune sets the banquet before them.

If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, how incapable must Man be of learning from experience.