Mark Twain

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

Soap and education are not as sudden as a massacre, but they are more deadly in the long run. Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond; cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education.

He does not care for flowers. Calls them rubbish, and cannot tell one from another, and thinks it is superior to feel like that.

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.

The trouble with you Chicago people is that you think you are the best people down here, whereas you are merely the most numerous.

The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them.

Nature has always had more force than education.

Choose the life that is most useful, and habit will make it the most agreeable.

Absolutely speaking, Do unto others as you would that they should do unto you is by no means a golden rule, but the best of current silver. An honest man would have but little occasion for it. It is golden not to have any rule at all in such a case.

Give no bounties: make equal laws: secure life and prosperity and you need not give alms.

He who is not just is severe, he who is not wise is sad.

There is no such thing as public opinion. There is only published opinion.

The light which puts out our eyes is darkness to us. Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star.

A banker is a fellow who lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining, but wants it back the minute it begins to rain.

Blame is safer than praise.

Technique is noticed most markedly in the case of those who have not mastered it.

If you have only one smile in you give it to the people you love.

Ordinary people seem not to realize that those who really apply themselves in the right way to philosophy are directly and of their own accord preparing themselves for dying and death.

They are decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all-powerful to be impotent.

Injustice in the end produces independence.

I answer the heroic question Death where is thy sting? It is here in my heart and mind and memories