Mark Twain

I refused to attend his funeral. But I wrote a very nice letter explaining that I approved of it.

Public opinion is held in reverence. It settles everything. Some think it is the voice of God.

We like a man to come right out and say what he thinks, if we agree with him.

The master minds of all nations, in all ages, have sprung in affluent multitude from the mass of the nation, and from the mass of the nation only – not from its privileged classes.

It is difference of opinion that makes horse races.

If you eat a frog first thing in the morning, the rest of your day will be wonderful.

The measure of a master is his success in bringing all men around to his opinion twenty years later.

We must be our own before we can be another’s.

Act, if you like, but you do it at your peril. Men’s actions are too strong for them. Show me a man who has acted and who has not been the victim and slave of his action.

It isn’t making mistakes that’s critical; it’s correcting them and getting on with the principal task.

He who distinguishes the true savor of his food can never be a glutton; he who does not cannot be otherwise.

Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.

There is no comparison between that which is lost by not succeeding and that which is lost by not trying.

If you have inner peace, nobody can force you to be a slave to the outer reality.

While we ourselves are the living graves of murdered beasts, how can we expect any ideal conditions on this earth?

Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life so. Aim above morality. Be not simply good, be good for something.

When a man is in doubt about this or that in his writing, it will often guide him if he asks himself how it will tell a hundred years hence.

Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that if the British Empire and Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, This was their finest hour.

Hardly a man in the world has an opinion upon morals, politics or religion which he got otherwise than through his associations and sympathies. Broadly speaking, there are none but corn-pone opinions. And broadly speaking, Corn-Pone stands for Self-Approval. Self-approval is acquired mainly from the approval of other people. The result is Conformity.

Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year.

The first thing a great person does, is make us realize the insignificance of circumstance.