Mark Twain

When you cannot get a compliment in any other way pay yourself one.

A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way.

People are much more willing to lend you books than bookcases.

The older we grow the greater becomes our wonder at how much ignorance one can contain without bursting one’s clothes.

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

Beautiful credit! The foundation of modern society. Who shall say that this is not the golden age of mutual trust, of unlimited reliance upon human promises? That is a peculiar condition of society which enables a whole nation to instantly recognize point and meaning in the familiar newspaper anecdote, which puts into the mouth of a distinguished speculator in lands and mines this remark: – I wasn’t worth a cent two years ago, and now I owe two millions of dollars.

Nature is full of freaks, and now puts an old head on young shoulders, and then takes a young heart heating under fourscore winters.

There isn’t a single human characteristic that can be safely labeled as American.

Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year.

The city is recruited from the country.

He that thinks he can afford to be negligent is not far from being poor.

Broken, like a mosaic, I am pieced together. I am still a piece of art, though I may not be fully appreciated by all, the ones that see the beauty, are the ones who have the understanding; gained through experience, that to break, doesn’t mean to give up.

Sorrow makes us all children again, destroys all differences of intellect. The wisest knows nothing.

The reward of one duty is the power to fulfill another.

Sympathy is a supporting atmosphere, and in it we unfold easily and well.

I do not mind lying, but I hate inaccuracy.

We are apt to love praise, but not deserve it. But if we would deserve it, we must love virtue more than that.

Natural abilities are like natural plants; they need pruning by study.

A crime persevered in a thousand centuries ceases to be a crime, and becomes a virtue. This is the law of custom, and custom supersedes all other forms of law.

We are made wise not by the recollection of our past, but by the responsibility for our future.

If we lose love and self respect for each other, this is how we finally die.