Mark Twain

I take my only exercise acting as a pallbearer at the funerals of my friends who exercise regularly.

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

The lack of money is the root of all evils.

If He Tom Sawyer had been a great and wise philosopher, like the writer of this book, he would now have comprehended that Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do and Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.

Continuous improvement is better than delayed perfection.

A home without a cat-and a well-fed, well-petted and properly revered cat-may be a perfect home, perhaps, but how can it prove title?

Associate reverently, as much as you can, with your loftiest thoughts.

To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires some of the same courage that a soldier needs.

Dare to live the life you have dreamed for yourself. Go forward and make your dreams come true.

Don’t be afraid. Be focused. Be determined. Be hopeful. Be empowered.

If he really thinks there is no distinction between vice and virtue, when he leaves our houses let us count our spoons.

By law of periodical repetition, everything which has happened once must happen again and again – and not capriciously, but at regular periods, and each thing in its own period, not another’s and each obeying its own law.

Optimism is the madness of insisting that all is well when we are miserable.

When you adopt the standards and the values of someone else… you surrender your own integrity. You become, to the extent of your surrender, less of a human being.

Censorship ends in logical completeness when nobody is allowed to read any books except the books nobody reads.

God is better served in resisting a Temptation to Evil, than in many formal Prayers.

It really boils down to this: that all life is interrelated. We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.

Every time you stop a school, you will have to build a jail. What you gain at one end you lose at the other. It’s like feeding a dog on his own tail. It won’t fatten the dog.

A day for toil, an hour for sport, but for a friend is life too short.

Every man alone is sincere. At the entrance of a second person, hypocrisy begins.

We must not inquire too curiously into motives… They are apt to become feeble in the utterance: the aroma is mixed with the grosser air. We must keep the germinating grain away from the light.