Mark Twain

To cease smoking is the easiest thing I ever did; I ought to know because I’ve done it a thousand times.

The cross of the Legion of Honor has been conferred on me. However, few escape that distinction.

I know the look of an apple that is roasting and sizzling on the hearth on a winter’s evening, and I know the comfort that comes of eating it hot, along with some sugar and a drench of cream… I know how the nuts taken in conjunction with winter apples, cider, and doughnuts, make old people’s tales and old jokes sound fresh and crisp and enchanting.

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

When people do not respect us we are sharply offended; yet deep down in his private heart no man much respects himself.

Never do wrong when people are looking.

You will have bad times, but they will always wake you up to the stuff you weren’t paying attention to.

Youth gets together with their materials to build a bridge to the moon or maybe a palace on earth; then in middle age they decide to build a woodshed with them instead.

The thought of two thousand people crunching celery at the same time horrified me.

The world is its own magic.

We must annex those people. We can afflict them with our wise and beneficent government. We can introduce the novelty of thieves, all the way up from street-car pickpockets to municipal robbers and Government defaulters, and show them how amusing it is to arrest them and try them and then turn them loose – some for cash and some for political influence. We can make them ashamed of their simple and primitive justice. We can make that little bunch of sleepy islands the hottest corner on earth, and array it in the moral splendor of our high and holy civilization. Annexation is what the poor islanders need. Shall we to men benighted, the lamp of life deny?

If you weren’t such a great man, you’d be a terrible bore.

We must use time wisely and forever realize that the time is always ripe to do right.

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

Our knowledge is the amassed thought and experience of innumerable minds.

Women tell men things that they are not likely to find out for themselves.

I believe in one thing only, the power of the human will

When we get to wishing a great deal for ourselves, whatever we get soon turns into mere limitation and exclusion.

Knowledge always demands increase; it is like fire, which must first be kindled by some external agent, but will afterwards always propagate itself.

Claret is the liquor for boys; port for men; but he who aspires to be a hero must drink brandy.

By trying we can easily learn to endure adversity. Another man’s, I mean.