Mark Twain

It is at our mother’s knee that we acquire our noblest and truest and highest ideals, but there is seldom any money in them.

Let us endeavor so to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.

He liked to like people, therefore people liked him.

Wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been.

Hardly a man in the world has an opinion upon morals, politics or religion which he got otherwise than through his associations and sympathies. Broadly speaking, there are none but corn-pone opinions. And broadly speaking, Corn-Pone stands for Self-Approval. Self-approval is acquired mainly from the approval of other people. The result is Conformity.

When in doubt tell the truth.

Distance has the same effect on the mind as on the eye.

A mere literary man is a dull man; a man who is solely a man of business is a selfish man; but when literature and commerce are united, they make a respectable man.

If you weren’t such a great man, you’d be a terrible bore.

Dictionaries are like watches; the worst is better than none, and the best cannot be expected to be quite true.

We live thick and are in each other’s way, and stumble over one another, and I think we thus lose some respect for one another.

The key to every man is his thought. He can only be reformed by showing him a new idea which commands his own.

I never desire to converse with a man who has written more than he has read.

A man is related to all nature.

Amuse not thy self therefore with the numerous Opinions of the World, nor value thy self upon verbal Orthodoxy, Philosophy, or thy Skill in Tongues, or Knowledge of the Fathers; (too much the Business and Vanity of the World). But in this rejoyce, That thou knowest God, that is the Lord, who exerciseth loving Kindness, and Judgment; and Righteousness in the Earth.

Have the fearless attitude of a hero and the loving heart of a child.

Beauty is the mark God sets on virtue. Every natural action is graceful; every heroic act is also decent, and causes the place and the bystanders to shine.

Life is a disease; and the only difference between one man and another is the stage of the disease at which he lives. You are always at the crisis: I am always in the convalescent stage.

If in doubt, don’t. If still in doubt, do what’s right.

Some people wave their dogmatic thinking until their own reason is entangled.

I have heard with admiring submission the experience of the lady who declared that the sense of being perfectly well dressed gives a feeling of inward tranquility which religion is powerless to bestow.