Mark Twain

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.

Forget and forgive. This is not difficult when properly understood. It means forget inconvenient duties, then forgive yourself for forgetting. By rigid practice and stern determination, it comes easy.

If you don’t like the weather in New England, just wait a few minutes.

My books are water; those of the great geniuses is wine. Everybody drinks water.

Thunder is good, thunder is impressive; but it is lightning that does the work.

There are many scapegoats for our sins, but the most popular is providence.

Appearances matter – and remember to smile.

Whoever thinks of going to bed before twelve o clock is a scoundrel.

Let freedom reign. The sun never set on so glorious a human achievement.

One may discover a new side to his most intimate friend when for the first time he hears him speak in public. He will be stranger to him as he is more familiar to the audience. The longest intimacy could not foretell how he would behave then

I think we foreshorten our own viewpoint if we consider any state of mind, or society, or government as final. Growth and change! We can’t get away from them.

On with dance, let joy be unconfined, is my motto; whether there’s any dance to dance or any joy to unconfined.

Things alter for the worse spontaneously, if they be not altered for the better designedly.

Truth often suffers more by the heat of its defenders than the arguments of its opposers.

I had three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society.

There is nothing makes a man suspect much, more than to know little, and therefore men should remedy suspicion by procuring to know more, and not keep their suspicions in smother.

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

I believe that he was really sorry that people would not believe he was sorry that he was not more sorry.

Disease generally begins that equality which death completes.

Our whole life is startlingly moral. There is never an instant’s truce between virtue and vice.

Some people have a foolish way of not minding, or pretending not to mind, what they eat. For my part, I mind my belly very studiously, and very carefully; for I look upon it, that he who does not mind his belly, will hardly mind anything else.