Mark Twain

Humor is mankind’s greatest blessing.

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.

It is sound judgment to put on a bold face and play your hand for a hundred times what it is worth; forty-nine times out of fifty nobody dares to call it, and you roll in the chips.

Prosperity is the surest breeder of insolence I know.

To my mind Judas Iscariot was nothing but a low, mean, premature Congressman.

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

The subtlety of nature is greater many times over than the subtlety of the senses and understanding.

Get a black suit and just freeload, problem it’s too God damned late now even to be any of the things I never wanted to be.

Rare virtues are like rare plants or animals, things that have not been able to hold their own in the world. A virtue to be serviceable must, like gold, be alloyed with some commoner but more durable metal.

We’re comic. We’re all comics. We live in a comic time. And the worse it gets the more comic we are.

Sir, I have no objection to a man’s drinking wine, if he can do it in moderation. I found myself apt to go to excess in it, and therefore, after having been for some time without it, on account of illness, I thought it better not to return to it. Every man is to judge for himself, according to the effects which he experiences.

Make a good use of the present.

If a man constantly aspires is he not elevated?

Is not a patron, my lord, one who looks with unconcern on a man struggling for life in the water, and, when he has reached ground, encumbers him with help? The notice which you have been pleased to take of my labors, had it been early, had been kind; but it has been delayed till I am indifferent, and cannot enjoy it; till I am solitary, and cannot impart it; till I am known, and do not want it.

The eloquent man is he who is no eloquent speaker, but who is inwardly drunk with a certain belief.

Gazing to the south, from the eastern peak, the moon appears through the raindrops.

So many objections may be made to everything, that nothing can overcome them but the necessity of doing something.

What we hope ever to do with ease, we must learn first to do with diligence.

Poor fellow! I think he is in love with you.’ I am not aware of it. And to me it is one of the most odious things in a girl’s life, that there must always be some supposition of falling in love coming between her and any man who is kind to her… I have no ground for the nonsensical vanity of fancying everybody who comes near me is in love with me.

I can teach anybody how to get what they want out of life. The problem is that I can’t find anybody who can tell me what they want.

Reminiscences make one feel so deliciously aged and sad.