Mark Twain

Repartee is something we think of twenty-four hours too late.

Why was the human race created? Or at least why wasn’t something creditable created in place of it? God had His opportunity. He could have made a reputation. But no, He must commit this grotesque folly – a lark which must have cost Him a regret or two when He came to think it over and observe effects.

There is nothing you can say in answer to a compliment. I have been complimented myself a great many times, and they always embarrass me-I always feel that they have not said enough.

When in doubt tell the truth.

Monarchies, aristocracies, and religions are all based upon that large defect in your race – the individual’s distrust of his neighbor, and his desire, for safety’s or comfort’s sake, to stand well in his neighbor’s eye. These institutions will always remain, and always flourish, and always oppress you, affront you, and degrade you, because you will always be and remain slaves of minorities. There was never a country where the majority of the people were in their secret hearts loyal to any of these institutions.

Necessity is the mother of taking chances.

To cultivate kindness is a valuable part of the business of life.

Why is it that we rejoice at a birth and grieve at a funeral? It is because we are not the person involved.

How some of the writers I come across get through their books without dying of boredom is beyond me.

The Athanasian Creed is to me light and intelligible reading in comparison with much that now passes for science.

The great advantages of simulation and dissimulation are three. First to lay asleep opposition and to surprise. For where a man’s intentions are published, it is an alarum to call up all that are against them. The second is to reserve a man’s self a fair retreat: for if a man engage himself, by a manifest declaration, he must go through, or take a fall. The third is, the better to discover the mind of another. For to him that opens himself, men will hardly show themselves adverse; but will fair let him go on, and turn their freedom of speech to freedom of thought.

Few women, I fear, have had such reason as I have to think the long sad years of youth were worth living for the sake of middle age.

The squirrel that you kill in jest, dies in earnest.

I see the player piano as the grandfather of the computer, the ancestor of the entire nightmare we live in, the birth of the binary world where there is no option other than yes or no and where there is no refuge.

There is much pain that is quite noiseless; and vibrations that make human agonies are often a mere whisper in the roar of hurrying existence. There are glances of hatred that stab and raise no cry of murder; robberies that leave man or woman for ever beggared of peace and joy, yet kept secret by the sufferer –committed to no sound except that of low moans in the night, seen in no writing except that made on the face by the slow months of suppressed anguish and early morning tears. Many an inherited sorrow that has marred a life has been breathed into no human ear.

We don’t want people to have expectations of us, but then we have expectations of everybody else.

I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and besides, the pig likes it.

All censorships exist to prevent anyone from challenging current conceptions and existing institutions. All progress is initiated by challenging current conceptions, and executed by supplanting existing institutions. Consequently, the first condition of progress is the removal of censorship.

Nothing makes the earth seem so spacious as to have friends at a distance; they make the latitudes and longitudes.

All good things are cheap: all bad are very dear.

Chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken.