Mark Twain

Happiness ain’t a thing in itself -it’s only a contrast with something that ain’t pleasant. And so, as soon as the novelty is over and the force of the contrast dulled, it ain’t happiness any longer, and you have to get something fresh.

The way to keep your health is to eat what you don’t want, drink what you don’t like, and do what you’d rather not.

October. This is one of the peculiarly dangerous months to speculate in stocks in. The others are July, January, September, April, November, May, March, June, December, August, and February.

Don’t tell fish stories where the people know you; but particularly, don’t tell them where they know the fish.

Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn’t.

It is not best that we should all think alike; it is a difference of opinion that makes horse races.

The avarice person is ever in want; let your desired aim have a fixed limit.

A portion of mankind take pride in their vices and pursue their purpose; many more waver between doing what is right and complying with what is wrong.

One way of getting an idea of our fellow-countrymen’s miseries is to go and look at their pleasures.

No two men can be half an hour together but one shall acquire an evident superiority over the other.

I really do not see much use in exalting the humble and meek; they do not remain humble and meek long when they are exalted.

None are so old as those who have outlived enthusiasm.

For a crowd is not company; and faces are but a gallery of pictures; and talk but a tinkling cymbal, where there is no love.

Seek ye first the good things of the mind, and the rest will either be supplied or its loss will not be felt.

If we had more time for discussion we should probably have made a great many more mistakes.

Employ your time in improving yourself by other men’s writings, so that you shall gain easily what others have labored hard for.

A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is brave five minutes longer.

He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches.

I know that we will be the sufferers if we let great wrongs occur without exerting ourselves to correct them.

The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, if they can’t find them, make them.

Remember where you came from.