Mark Twain

Education is the path from cocky ignorance to miserable uncertainty.

We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it – and stop there; lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot stove-lid. She will never sit down on a hot stove-lid again – and that is well; but also she will never sit down on a cold one anymore.

Between us, we cover all knowledge; he knows all that can be known and I know the rest.

Be virtuous and you will be eccentric.

In the real world, nothing happens at the right place at the right time. It is the job of journalists and historians to correct that.

Prosperity is the best protector of principle.

Everyone should keep a mental wastepaper basket, and the older he grows, the more things will he promptly consign to it.

Our best history is still poetry.

There are few virtues that the Poles do not possess and there are few errors they have ever avoided.

All murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.

We hear and apprehend only what we already half know.

Always seeking acceptance from others, searching for belonging. Striving for individuality, yet wanting to fit in. Never understanding that acceptance for one’s own individuality make all of that redundant.

Man is a shrewd inventor, and is ever taking the hint of a new machine from his own structure, adapting some secret of his own anatomy in iron, wood, and leather, to some required function in the work of the world.

He that outlives a wife whom he has long loved, sees himself disjoined from the only mind that has the same hopes, and fears, and interest; from the only companion with whom he has shared much good and evil; and with whom he could set his mind at liberty, to retrace the past or anticipate the future. The continuity of being is lacerated; the settled course of sentiment and action is stopped; and life stands suspended and motionless.

There is no daily chore so trivial that it cannot be made important by skipping it two days running.

I have been complimented many times and they always embarrass me; I always feel that they have not said enough.

No man is a hypocrite in his pleasures.

Stress is caused by being here but wanting to be there.

Sir, I have found you an argument. I am not obliged to find you an understanding.

Do not try to live forever. You will not succeed.

As the Sandwich Islander believes that the strength and valor of the enemy he kills passes into himself, so we gain the strength of the temptation we resist.