Mark Twain

A soiled baby, with a neglected nose, cannot be conscientiously regarded as a thing of beauty.

Of the delights of this world, man cares most for sexual intercourse. He will go to any length for it-risk fortune, character, reputation, life itself.

I have been through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened.

Lord save us all from a hope tree that has lost the faculty of putting out blossoms.

There is nothing in the world like a persuasive speech to fuddle the mental apparatus.

It is at our mother’s knee that we acquire our noblest and truest and highest ideals, but there is seldom any money in them.

I tell you there isn’t a thing under the sun that needs to be done at all, but what a man can do better than a woman, unless it’s bearing children, and they do that in a poor make-shift way; it had better been left to the men.

As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind. To make a deep physical path, we walk again and again. To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives.

A verse from the Veda says, ‘What you see, you become.’ In other words, just the experience of perceiving the world makes you what you are. This is a quite literal statement.

See one promontory, one mountain, one sea, one river and see all.

The tallest trees are most in the power of the winds, and ambitious men of the blasts of fortune.

For every why he had a wherefore.

Kindness is in our power, even when fondness is not.

Go oft to the house of thy friend, for weeds choke the unused path.

A man must be big enough to admit his mistakes, smart enough to profit from them, and strong enough to correct them.

Being is the great explainer.

Of all the anti-social vested interests the worst is the vested interest in ill-health.

Health is the condition of wisdom, and the sign is cheerfulness – an open and noble temper.

I am not an Athenian, nor a Greek, but a citizen of the world.

Remember, when life’s path is steep, to keep your mind even.

As soon as beauty is sought not from religion and love, but for pleasure, it degrades the seeker.