Mark Twain

When I was fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have him around. When I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years.

One of the most striking differences between a cat and a lie is that a cat has only nine lives.

Humor must not professedly teach and it must not professedly preach, but it must do both if it would live forever.

Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example.

As a thinker and planner the ant is the equal of any savage race of men; as a self-educated specialist in several arts she is the superior of any savage race of men; and in one or two high mental qualities she is above the reach of any man, savage or civilized!

The radical invents the views. When he has worn them out, the conservative adopts them.

Train yourself to let go of everything you fear to lose.

Do not do to others what angers you if done to you by others.

October. This is one of the peculiarly dangerous months to speculate in stocks in. The others are July, January, September, April, November, May, March, June, December, August, and February.

It is a lesson which all history teaches wise men, to put trust in ideas, and not in circumstances.

Some look at things that are, and ask why. I dream of things that never were and ask why not?

I feel nothing but the accursed happiness I have dreaded all my life long: the happiness that comes as life goes, the happiness of yielding and dreaming instead of resisting and doing, the sweetness of the fruit that is going rotten.

I respect not his labors, his farm where everything has its price, who would carry the landscape, who would carry his God, to market, if he could get anything for him; who goes to market for his god as it is; on whose farm nothing grows free, whose fields bear no crops, whose meadows no flowers, whose trees no fruits, but dollars.

Our planet is being turned into a filthy and evil-smelling imperialist barrack.

You only find out who is swimming naked when the tide goes out.

Strength doesn’t come from what you can do. It comes from overcoming the things you once thought you couldn’t.

They that deny a God destroy man’s nobility; for certainly man is of kin to the beasts by his body; and, if he be not of kin to God by his spirit, he is a base and ignoble creature.

If animals could speak, the dog would be a blundering outspoken fellow; but the cat would have the rare grace of never saying a word too much.

I don’t think the human mind can comprehend the past and the future. They are both just illusions that can manipulate you into thinking theres some kind of change.

No one ever became great by imitation.

I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.