Mark Twain

Better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than to open it and remove all doubt.

I repeat, sir, that in whatever position you place a woman she is an ornament to society and a treasure to the world. As a sweetheart, she has few equals and no superiors; as a cousin, she is convenient; as a wealthy grandmother with an incurable distemper, she is precious; as a wet-nurse, she has no equal among men. What, sir, would the people of the earth be without woman? They would be scarce, sir, almighty scarce.

Climate is what we expect, weather is what we get.

If man had created man, he would be ashamed of his performance.

What a good thing Adam had. When he said a good thing, he knew nobody had said it before.

What a good thing Adam had. When he said a good thing he knew nobody had said it before.

The world is populated in the main by people who should not exist.

I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma; but perhaps there is a key. That key is Russian national interest.

The most dangerous thing is illusion.

Common sense is genius dressed in its working clothes.

Mr. Emerson visited Thoreau at the jail, and the meeting between the two philosophers must have been interesting and somewhat dramatic. The account of the meeting was told me by Miss Maria Thoreau Henry Thoreaus auntHenry, why are you here? Waldo, why are you not here?

What contemptible scoundrel has stolen the cork to my lunch?

He has been a doctor a year now and has had two patients, no, three, I think – yes, it was three; I attended their funerals.

Will not a tiny speck very close to our vision blot out the glory of the world, and leave only a margin by which we see the blot? I know no speck so troublesome as self.

Only a man’s character is the real criterion of worth.

You don’t learn to hold your own in the world by standing on guard, but by attacking and getting well hammered yourself.

And deep in my heart. The answer, it was in me. And I made up my mind. To define my own destiny.

Truth is the property of no individual but is the treasure of all men.

Whoever wishes to attain an English style, familiar but not coarse, and elegant but not ostentatious, must give his days and nights to the volumes of Addison.

A fly may sting a stately horse and make him wince; but one is but an insect, and the other is a horse still.

Except during the nine months before he draws his first breath, no man manages his affairs as well as a tree. We are inclined to believe those whom we do not know because they have never deceived us.