Mark Twain

The public is the only critic whose opinion is worth anything at all.

Everything has its limit – iron ore cannot be educated into gold.

A person who won’t read has no advantage over one who can’t read.

We have a criminal jury system which is superior to any in the world; and its efficiency is only marred by the difficulty of finding twelve men every day who don’t know anything and can’t read.

Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.

If you have nothing to say, say nothing.

Life began with waking up and loving my mother’s face.

If a thousand men were not to pay their tax-bills this year, that would not be a violent and bloody measure, as it would be to pay them, and enable the State to commit violence and shed innocent blood. This is, in fact, the definition of a peaceable revolution, if any such is possible.

Nature is often hidden, sometimes overcome, seldom extinguished.

Speech is for the convenience of those who are hard of hearing; but there are many fine things which we cannot say if we have to shout.

To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.

Fame is proof that the people are gullible.

Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.

Why level downward to our dullest perception always, and praise that as common sense? The commonest sense is the sense of men asleep, which they express by snoring.

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

A faith is a necessity to a man. Woe to him who believes in nothing.

For a crowd is not company; and faces are but a gallery of pictures; and talk but a tinkling cymbal, where there is no love.

Quarrel? Nonsense; we have not quarreled. If one is not to get into a rage sometimes, what is the good of being friends?

There is no more fatal blunderer than he who consumes the greater part of his life getting his living.

Never do wrong when people are looking.

We have a lot of anxieties, and one cancels out another very often.