Mark Twain

Drag your thoughts away from your troubles… by the ears, by the heels, or any other way you can manage it.

There is no sadder sight than a young pessimist, except an old optimist.

The people of those foreign countries are very, very ignorant. They looked curiously at the costumes we had brought from the wilds of America. They observed that we talked loudly at table sometimes. They noticed that we looked out for expenses and got what we conveniently could out of a franc, and wondered where in the mischief we came from. In Paris they just simply opened their eyes and stared when we spoke to them in French! We never did succeed in making those idiots understand their own language.

The radical of one century is the conservative of the next. The radical invents the views. When he has worn them out, the conservative adopts them.

Public opinion is held in reverence. It settles everything. Some think it is the voice of God.

Scientists have odious manners, except when you prop up their theory; then you can borrow money of them.

The great danger of conversion in all ages has been that when the religion of the high mind is offered to the lower mind, the lower mind, feeling its fascination without understanding it, and being incapable of rising to it, drags it down to its level by degrading it.

He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune, for they are impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief. Certainly the best works and of greatest merit for the public have proceeded from the unmarried or childless men, which both in affection and means have married and endowed the public. He was reputed one of the wise men that made answer to the question, when a man should marryA young man not yet, an elder man not at all.

I think that we may safely trust a good deal more than we do. We may waive just so much care of ourselves as we honestly bestow elsewhere.

Let us treat the men and women well: treat them as if they were real: perhaps they are.

Nothing makes a man so selfish as work.

Anyone who has the power to make you believe absurdities has the power to make you commit injustices.

So far as a person thinks; they are free.

Does he council you better who bids you, Money, by right means, if you can: but by any means, make money?

But lo! men have become the tools of their tools.

Dare to think for yourself.

To have in general but little feeling, seems to be the only security against feeling too much on any particular occasion.

If a man’s eye is on the Eternal, his intellect will grow.

Of all virtues and dignities of the mind, goodness is the greatest, being the character of the Deity; and without it, man is a busy, mischievous, wretched thing.

Be not simply good – be good for something.

I have found men to be more kind than I expected, and less just.