Mark Twain

If the desire to kill and the opportunity to kill came always together, who would escape hanging?

Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do. Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.

There it is: it doesn’t make any difference who we are or what we are, there’s always somebody to look down on! somebody to hold in light esteem, somebody to be indifferent about.

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

I never could keep a promise. I do not blame myself for this weakness, because the fault must lie in my physical organization. It is likely that such a very liberal amount of space was given to the organ which enables me to make promises that the organ which should enable me to keep them was crowded out. But I grieve not. I like no half-way things. I had rather have one faculty nobly developed than two faculties of mere ordinary capacity.

If it’s your job to eat a frog, it’s best to do it first thing in the morning. And If it’s your job to eat two frogs, it’s best to eat the biggest one first.

Courage: the most important of all the virtues because without courage, you can’t practice any other virtue consistently.

Some thoughts always find us young, and keep us so. Such a thought is the love of the universal and eternal beauty.

After a few months’ acquaintance with European coffee, one’s mind weakens, and his faith with it, and he begins to wonder if the rich beverage of home, with its clotted layer of yellow cream on top of it, is not a mere dream after all, and a thing which never existed.

To let friendship die away by negligence and silence is certainly not wise. It is voluntarily to throw away one of the greatest comforts of the weary pilgrimage.

Too often the strong, silent man is silent only because he does not know what to say, and is reputed strong only because he has remained silent.

If you have an important point to make, don’t try to be subtle or clever. Use the pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time; a tremendous whack.

Not to be provok’d is best: But if mov’d, never correct till the Fume is spent; For every Stroke our Fury strikes, is sure to hit our selves at last.

I am sorry to think that you do not get a man’s most effective criticism until you provoke him. Severe truth is expressed with some bitterness.

Mix a little foolishness with your serious plans. It is lovely to be silly at the right moment.

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

I have never felt that anything really mattered but knowing that you stood for the things in which you believed and had done the very best you could.

Only in the darkness can you see the stars.

All conservatives are such from personal defects. They have been effeminated by position or nature, born halt and blind, through luxury of their parents, and can only, like invalids, act on the defensive.

Nature always wears the colors of the spirit.

People care more about being thought to have taste than about being thought either good, clever or amiable.