Mark Twain

A powerful agent is the right word. Whenever we come upon one of those intensely right words… the resulting effect is physical as well as spiritual, and electrically prompt.

Of all God’s creatures there is only one that cannot be made the slave of the lash. That one is the cat. If man could be crossed with a cat it would improve man, but it would deteriorate the cat.

There are many humorous things in the world; among them, the white man’s notion that he is less savage than the other savages.

Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life. (The conviction of the rich that the poor are happier is no more foolish than the conviction of the poor that the rich are.)

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

There is a great deal of human nature in people.

Without a rich heart, wealth is an ugly beggar.

I am admonished in many ways that time is pushing me inexorably along. I am approaching the threshold of age; in 1977 I shall be 142. This is no time to be flitting about the earth. I must cease from the activities proper to youth and begin to take on the dignities and gravities and inertia proper to that season of honorable senility which is on its way.

Certainly the best works, and of greatest merit for the public, have proceeded from the unmarried, or childless men.

It really boils down to this: that all life is interrelated. We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.

Contentment is natural wealth, luxury is artificial poverty.

In the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, look around you.

Don’t learn to do, but learn in doing. Let your falls not be on a prepared ground, but let them be bona fide falls in the rough and tumble of the world.

The egoism which enters into our theories does not affect their sincerity; rather, the more our egoism is satisfied, the more robust is our belief.

Is not every man sometimes a radical in politics? Men are conservatives when they are least vigorous, or when they are most luxurious. They are conservatives after dinner, or before taking their rest; when they are sick, or aged. In the morning, or when their intellect or their conscience has been aroused; when they hear music, or when they read poetry, they are radicals.

Friends are thieves of time.

Failure after long perseverance is much grander than never to have a striving good enough to be called a failure.

Quarrel? Nonsense; we have not quarreled. If one is not to get into a rage sometimes, what is the good of being friends?

Habit is habit, and not to be flung out of the window by any man, but coaxed downstairs a step at a time.

Life is what happens to you when you’re busy making other plans.

No one ever became great by imitation.