Mark Twain

Sacred cows make the best hamburger.

No real gentleman will tell the naked truth in the presence of ladies.

By law of periodical repetition, everything which has happened once must happen again and again – and not capriciously, but at regular periods, and each thing in its own period, not another’s and each obeying its own law.

The educated Southerner has no use for an ‘R’, except at the beginning of a word.

The right word may be effective, but no word was ever as effective as a rightly timed pause.

Drag your thoughts away from your troubles… by the ears, by the heels, or any other way you can manage it.

It’s not the adversity, but how you face it.

We know now that the soul is the body, and the body the soul. They tell us they are different because they want to persuade us that we can keep our souls if we let them make slaves of our bodies.

Logic is like the sword

Count on it, if a person talks of their misfortune, there is something in it that is not disagreeable to them.

A crank is someone with a new idea – until it catches on.

To him whose elastic and vigorous thought keeps pace with the sun, the day is a perpetual morning.

He who learns but does not think is lost. He who thinks but does not learn is in great danger.

A round man cannot be expected to fit in a square hole right away. He must have time to modify his shape.

Silence is the great teacher, and to learn its lessons you must pay attention to it. There is no substitute for the creative inspiration, knowledge, and stability that come from knowing how to contact your core of inner silence. The great Sufi poet Rumi wrote, Only let the moving waters calm down, and the sun and moon will be reflected on the surface of your being.

Is there anyone so wise as to learn by the experience of others?

Believe nothing against another but on good authority; and never report what may hurt another, unless it be a greater hurt to some other to conceal it.

That man is rich whose pleasures are the cheapest.

Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything that is beautiful; for beauty is God’s handwriting – a wayside sacrament. Welcome it in every fair face, in every fair sky, in every fair flower, and thank God for it as a cup of blessing.

He who is taught to live upon little owes more to his father’s wisdom than he who has a great deal left to him owes to his father’s care.

Renunciation remains sorrow, though a sorrow borne willingly.