Mark Twain

My parents were neither very poor nor conspicuously honest.

Suppose you were an idiot, and suppose you were a member of congress; but I repeat myself.

The most interesting information come from children, for they tell all they know and then stop.

You can’t depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.

A powerful agent is the right word. Whenever we come upon one of those intensely right words… the resulting effect is physical as well as spiritual, and electrically prompt.

I believe that our Heavenly Father invented man because he was disappointed in the monkey.

Sir Joshua would have been glad to take her portrait; and he would have had an easier task than the historian at least in this, that he would not have had to represent the truth of change –only to give stability to one beautiful moment.

New ideas come into this world somewhat like falling meteors, with a flash and an explosion, and perhaps somebody

The man who is a pessimist before 48 knows too much; if he is an optimist after it, he knows too little.

A man makes inferiors his superiors by heat; self-control is the rule.

The late M. Venizelos observed that in all her wars Englandhe should have said Britain, of coursealways wins one battlethe last.

Adversity reveals genius, prosperity conceals it.

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.

When a person cannot deceive himself the chances are against his being able to deceive other people.

The love of economy is the root of all virtue.

For what are the classics but the noblest thoughts of man? They are the only oracles which are not decayed, and there are such answers to the most modern inquiry in them as Delphi and Dodona never gave. We might as well omit to study Nature because she is old.

Usually the modest person passes for someone reserved, the silent for a sullen person

This is the ultimate end of man, to find the One which is in him; which is his truth, which is his soul; the key with which he opens the gate of the spiritual life, the heavenly kingdom.

There must be what Mr. Gladstone many years ago called a blessed act of oblivion. We must all turn our backs upon the horrors of the past. We must look to the future. We cannot afford to drag forward across the years that are to come the hatreds and revenges which have sprung from the injuries of the past.

Nay, be a Columbus to whole new continents and worlds within you, opening new channels, not of trade, but of thought.

The only thing that is ultimately real about your journey is the step that you are taking at this moment. That’s all there ever is.