Mark Twain

I never could tell a lie that anybody would doubt, nor a truth that anybody would believe.

Adam was the luckiest man; he had no mother-in-law.

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

If the world comes to an end, I want to be in Cincinnati. Everything comes there ten years later.

We may not pay Satan reverence, for that would be indiscreet, but we can at least respect his talents.

Loyalty to country ALWAYS. Loyalty to government, when it deserves it.

Out of the unconscious lips of babes and sucklings are we satirized.

No question is so difficult to answer as that which the answer is obvious.

If matters go badly now, they will not always be so.

Upon awakening, let the words Thank You flow from your lips, for this will remind you to begin your day with gratitude and compassion.

Beauty rests on necessities.

The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery.

An empire is an immense egotism.

The future is purchased by the present.

Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.

I know of no such unquestionable badge and ensign of a sovereign mind as that of tenacity of purpose.

There are minds so impatient of inferiority that their gratitude is a species of revenge, and they return benefits not because recompense is a pleasure for them, but because obligation is a pain.

What is the matter with the poor is poverty; what is the matter with the rich is uselessness.

Disease generally begins that equality which death completes.

Nothing is secure but life, transition, the energizing spirit.

Be careless in your dress if you will, but keep a tidy soul.