Mark Twain

Continuous improvement is better than delayed perfection.

Never put off until tomorrow, what you can put off until the day after tomorrow.

That’s what an army is – a mob; they don’t fight with courage that’s born in them, but with courage that’s borrowed from their mass, and from their officers.

In religion and politics people’s beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination, from authorities who have not themselves examined the questions at issue but have taken them at second-hand from other non-examiners, whose opinions about them were not worth a brass farthing.

Damn the subjunctive. It brings all our writers to shame.

When in doubt tell the truth.

Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.

We don’t see the things the way they are. We see things the way WE are.

Right now, make a list of what you admire about yourself- don’t stop until you’ve filled a page. Sit and relish each quality and accomplishment. When you remember how much you have to be proud of, you don’t need to envy others. Instead of wallowing in your jealousy, use your friends’ accomplishments as inspiration to pursue the life you want.

A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.

Change can come in either of two important ways: Start behaving positively or stop behaving negatively.

Your manuscript is both good and original, but the part that is good is not original and the part that is original is not good.

Don’t part with your illusions. When they are gone, you may still exist, but you have ceased to live.

Pain is the price you pay for resisting life.

If the human mind was simple enough to understand, we’d be too simple to understand it.

The miracle, or the power, that elevates the few is to be found in their industry, application, and perseverance under the prompting of a brave, determined spirit.

Art hath an enemy called Ignorance.

So I’ve seen life as one long learning process. And if I see – you know, if I fly on somebody else’s airline and find the experience is not a pleasant one, which it wasn’t in – 21 years ago, then I’d think, well, you know, maybe I can create the kind of airline that I’d like to fly on.

You are the fever that never broke, the name stuck in my throat. You are every letter of every word in every poem I ever wrote.

Improvements have been coming so quickly that the past is being lost to the rising generation, and it can be preserved only by putting it in a form where it may be seen and felt. That is the reason behind this collection.

Necessity is the plea of every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.