Mark Twain

Wit is the sudden marriage of ideas which, before their union, were not perceived to have any relation.

A man never reaches that dizzy height of wisdom that he can no longer be lead by the nose.

I believe that our Heavenly Father invented man because he was disappointed in the monkey.

There are several good protections against temptation, but the surest is cowardice.

Only one thing is impossible for God: To find any sense in any copyright law on the planet.

I take my only exercise acting as a pallbearer at the funerals of my friends who exercise regularly.

The civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the use of his feet.

No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature. Good and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this; the only right is what is after my own constitution; the only wrong what is against it.

It’s not burn baby burn, but learn, baby, learn, so that you can earn, baby, earn.

Reality leaves a lot to the imagination.

That which we do not believe, we cannot adequately say; even though we may repeat the words ever so often.

This merriment of parsons is mighty offensive.

Whatever the human law may be, neither an individual nor a nation can commit the least act of injustice against the obscurest individual without having to pay the penalty for it.

We had the sky up there, and we used to lay on our backs and look up at them, and discuss whether they was made or just happened.

A human life, I think, should be well rooted in some area of native land where it may get the love of tender kinship from the earth, for the labors men go forth to, for the sounds and accents that haunt it, for whatever will give that early home a familiar unmistakable difference amidst the future widening of knowledge. The best introduction to astronomy is to think of the nightly heavens as a little lot of stars belonging to one’s own homestead.

People grow through experience if they meet life honestly and courageously. This is how character is built.

…with the black marble which gives the fireplace the air of a miniature family vault, to suggest early Victorian commercial respectability, belief in money, Bible fetichism, fear of hell always at war with fear of poverty, instinctive horror of the passionate character of art, love and Roman Catholic religion, and all the first fruits of plutocracy in the early generations of the industrial revolution.

In nature nothing can be given. All things are sold.

The secret of culture is to learn, that a few great points steadily reappear.

Visit the Navy-Yard, and behold a marine, such a man as an American government can make, or such as it can make a man with its black arts – a mere shadow and reminiscence of humanity, a man laid out alive and standing, and already, as one may say, buried under arms with funeral accompaniments.

And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it.