Mark Twain

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 usually takes me more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech.

When a person cannot deceive himself the chances are against his being able to deceive other people.

War talk by men who have been in a war is always interesting; whereas moon talk by a poet who has not been in the moon is likely to be dull.

But who prays for Satan? Who, in eighteen centuries, has had the common humanity to pray for the one sinner that needed it most?

We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it – and stop there; lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot stove-lid. She will never sit down on a hot stove-lid again – and that is well; but also she will never sit down on a cold one anymore.

Adversity reveals genius, prosperity conceals it.

Failure at some point in your life is inevitable, but giving up is unforgivable.

You are a constant. Forever in my mind; forever in my heart. It seems that most matter how much I try I can’t get rid of you. You are a thorn, stuck in deep; painful to remove, and even when I do, still I’ll bleed and feel the soreness. It will take time, but it will heal. No matter the pain, I will still dare to pick roses.

The course of everything goes to teach us faith.

Meeting Franklin Roosevelt was like opening your first bottle of champagne; knowing him was like drinking it.

Defeat in itself was part and parcel of the great gambling game of politics. A man who could not accept it and try again was not of the stuff of which leaders are made.

God Almighty first planted a garden. And indeed, it is the purest of human pleasures.

Give me insight into today and you may have the antique and future worlds.

Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere. They’re in each other all along.

Each thought that is welcomed and recorded is a nest egg by the side of which more will be laid.

The laboring man has not leisure for a true integrity day by day.

Big doors swing on little hinges.

Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.

He ate and drank the precious Words, his Spirit grew robust; He knew no more that he was poor, nor that his frame was Dust

Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man.