Mark Twain

There is no character, howsoever good and fine, but it can be destroyed by ridicule, howsoever poor and witless. Observe the ass, for instance: his character is about perfect, he is the choicest spirit among all the humbler animals, yet see what ridicule has brought him to. Instead of feeling complimented when we are called an ass, we are left in doubt.

Only one thing is impossible for God: To find any sense in any copyright law on the planet.

Adam was but human-this explains it all. He did not want the apple for the apple’s sake, he wanted it only because it was forbidden. The mistake was in not forbidding the serpent; then he would have eaten the serpent.

I was young and foolish then; now I am old and foolisher.

In the real world, nothing happens at the right place at the right time. It is the job of journalists and historians to correct that.

Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.

If you miss the present moment, you miss your appointment with life. That is very serious!

Society is infested by persons who, seeing that the sentiments please, counterfeit the expression of them. These we call sentimentalists – talkers who mistake the description for the thing, saying for having.

The wise man in the storm prays to God, not for safety from danger, but for deliverance from fear.

We are all alike, on the inside.

Where God does not govern, tyrants will rule.

Friendships begin with liking or gratitude roots that can be pulled up.

If you strike a child, take care that you strike it in anger, even at the risk of maiming it for life. A blow in cold blood neither can nor should be forgiven.

It is your character, and your character alone, that will make your life happy or unhappy.

Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs.

Labor, if it were not necessary for existence, would be indispensable for the happiness of man.

Forgive him, for he believes that the customs of his tribe are the laws of nature!

Genial manners are good, and power of accommodation to any circumstance, but the high prize of life, the crowning fortune of a man is to be born with a bias to some pursuit, which finds him in employment and happiness, — whether it be to make baskets, or broadswords, or canals, or statutes, or songs. I doubt not this was the meaning of Socrates, when he pronounced artists the only truly wise, as being actually, not apparently so.

Pasteboard pies and paper flowers are being banished from the stage by the growth of that power of accurate observation which is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it….

Force may make hypocrites, but it can never make converts.

Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake.