Mark Twain

Golf is a good walk spoiled.

We have not the reverent feeling for the rainbow that a savage has, because we know how it is made. We have lost as much as we gained by prying into that matter.

All schools, all colleges, have two great functions: to confer, and to conceal, valuable knowledge. The theological knowledge which they conceal cannot justly be regarded as less valuable than that which they reveal. That is, when a man is buying a basket of strawberries it can profit him to know that the bottom half of it is rotten.

When in doubt tell the truth.

Be careless in your dress if you will, but keep a tidy soul.

Every time you stop a school, you will have to build a jail. What you gain at one end you lose at the other. It’s like feeding a dog on his own tail. It won’t fatten the dog.

Human life is everywhere a state in which much is to be endured, and little to be enjoyed.

The giving of love is an education in itself.

The opportunity for doing mischief is found a hundred times a day, and of doing good once in a year.

Many a man’s strength is in opposition, and when he faileth, he grows out of use.

Haste makes Work which Caution prevents.

Silence is the most perfect expression of scorn.

That’s what a man wants in a wife, mostly; he wants to make sure one fool tells him he’s wise.

Principles aren’t of much account anyway, except at election time. After that you hang them up to let them season.

Nature has made up her mind that what cannot defend itself shall not be defended.

It generally happens that assurance keeps an even pace with ability.

Without frugality none can be rich, and with it very few would be poor.

The man who writes about himself and his own time is the only man who writes about all people and about all time.

I have found out that there ain’t no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than to travel with them.

The disciplined are free.

The growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistorical acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.