Mark Twain

The highest perfection of politeness is only a beautiful edifice, built, from the base to the dome, of ungraceful and gilded forms of charitable and unselfish lying.

Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life. The conviction of the rich that the poor are happier is no more foolish than the conviction of the poor that the rich are.

Let us consider that we are all partially insane. It will explain us to each other; it will unriddle many riddles; it will make clear and simple many things which are involved in haunting and harassing difficulties and obscurities now.

Often the surest way to convey misinformation is to tell the strict truth.

One may make their house a palace of sham, or they can make it a home, a refuge.

Any so-called material thing that you want is merely a symbol: you want it not for itself, but because it will content your spirit for the moment.

Never tell the truth to people who are not worthy of it.

The drama’s laws, the drama’s patrons give, for we that live to please, must please to live.

Do something every day that you don’t want to do. This is the golden rule for acquiring the habit of doing your duty without pain.

Be humble. It becomes a creature, a depending and borrowed being, that lives not of itself, but breathes in another’s air with another’s breath, and is accountable for every moment of time and can call nothing its own, but is absolutely a tenant at will of the great Lord of heaven and earth.

Let freedom reign. The sun never set on so glorious a human achievement.

Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond; cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education.

Who’s not sat tense before his own heart’s curtain.

We should come home from adventures and perils and discoveries with new experiences and character.

A friend who cannot at a pinch remember a thing or two that never happened is as bad as one who does not know how to forget.

I am not an optimist, but a great believer of hope.

The billiard table is better than the doctor.

Liberty without obedience is confusion, and obedience without liberty is slavery.

I refused to attend his funeral. But I wrote a very nice letter explaining that I approved of it.

Life must be filled up, and the man who is not capable of intellectual pleasures must content himself with such as his senses can afford.

For what avail the plough or sail, Or land or life, if freedom fail?