Mark Twain

Sometimes too much to drink is barely enough.

What is there that confers the noblest delight? What is that which swells a man’s breast with pride above that which any other experience can bring to him? Discovery! To know that you are walking where none others have walked; that you are beholding what human eye has not seen before; that you are breathing a virgin atmosphere. To give birth to an idea, to discover a great thought – an intellectual nugget, right under the dust of a field that many a brain-plough had gone over before. To find a new planet, to invent a new hinge, to find a way to make the lightning carry your messages. To be the first – that is the idea.

It is difference of opinion that makes horse races.

The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them.

Let us make a special effort to stop communicating with each other, so we can have some conversation.

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.

The really efficient laborer will be found not to crowd his day with work, but will saunter to his task surrounded by a wide halo of ease and leisure.

Do something every day that you don’t want to do. This is the golden rule for acquiring the habit of doing your duty without pain.

Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add color to my sunset sky.

To do something, say something, see something, before anybody else – these are things that confer a pleasure compared with which other pleasures are tame and commonplace, other ecstasies cheap and trivial.

I want to be free; to escape. I use my pen as oars; the paper as my boat. I fill these pages to keep me afloat. I ride the waves of turmoil, so I can paddle away to calmer seas.

If you have knowledge, let others light their candles with it.

The greatest genius is the most indebted person.

One of the benefits of a college education is to show the boy its little avail.

It is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.

No thought, no reflection, no analysis, no cultivation, no intention; let it settle itself.

Upon retiring, sleep as if you had entered your last sleep. Upon awakening, leave your bed behind you instantly as if you had cast away a pair of old shoes.

If you and I are having a single thought of violence or hatred against anyone in the world at this moment, we are contributing to the wounding of the world.

It is natural to die as to be born.

New arts destroy the old.

For it is not possible to join serpentine wisdom with columbine innocency, except men know exactly all the conditions of the serpent: his baseness and going upon his belly, his volubility and lubricity, his envy and sting, and the rest; that is, all forms and natures of evil: for without this, virtue lieth open and unfenced.