Mark Twain

Be careless in your dress if you will, but keep a tidy soul.

It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native criminal class except Congress.

The secret source of humour itself is not joy, but sorrow. There is no humour in heaven.

There are times when one would like to hang the whole human race, and finish the farce.

A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval.

War talk by men who have been in a war is always interesting; whereas moon talk by a poet who has not been in the moon is likely to be dull.

If you would lift me up you must be on higher ground.

Do not discourage your children from hoarding, if they have a taste to it; whoever lays up his penny rather than part with it for a cake, at least is not the slave of gross appetite; and shows besides a preference always to be esteemed, of the future to the present moment.

The trade of advertising is now so near perfection that it is not easy to propose any improvement. But as every art ought to be exercised in due subordination to the public good, I cannot but propose it as a moral question to these masters of the public ear, whether they do not sometimes play too wantonly with our passions.

Remember who you are.

People with great gifts are easy to find, but symmetrical and balanced ones never.

All of humanity is living in a dream world, but suffering real consequences.

Intellectual work is misnamed; it is a pleasure, a dissipation, and is its own highest reward.

Trust yourself. You’ve survived a lot, and you’ll survive whatever is coming.

We want a few mad people now. See where the sane ones have landed us!

Love grows. Lust wastes by Enjoyment, and the Reason is, that one springs from an Union of Souls, and the other from an Union of Sense.

Society is always taken by surprise at any new example of common sense.

The doctor learns that if he gets ahead of the superstitions of his patients he is a ruined man; and the result is that he instinctively takes care not to get ahead of them.

No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism.

Many might go to Heaven with half the labor they go to hell.

We rarely find anyone who can say he has lived a happy life, and who, content with his life, can retire from the world like a satisfied guest.