Mark Twain

Be careless in your dress if you will, but keep a tidy soul.

To cease smoking is the easiest thing I ever did; I ought to know because I’ve done it a thousand times.

Life would be infinitely happier if we could only be born at the age of eighty and gradually approach eighteen.

Name the greatest of all inventors. Accident.

There is no God, no universe, no human race, no earthly life, no heaven, no hell. It is all a dream, a grotesque and foolish dream. Nothing exists but you. And you are but a thought -a vagrant thought, a useless thought, a homeless thought, wandering forlorn among the empty eternities!

Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please.

Love must be as much a light, as it is a flame.

No place affords a more striking conviction of the vanity of human hopes, than a public library.

It does not need that a poem should be long. Every word was once a poem. Every new relationship is a new word.

As to marriage or celibacy, let a man take which course he will, he will be sure to repent.

How people treat you is their karma; how you react is yours.

It is dangerous for mortal beauty, or terrestrial virtue, to be examined by too strong a light. The torch of Truth shows much that we cannot, and all that we would not, see.

The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.

There is nothing, Sir, too little for so little a creature as man. It is by studying little things that we attain the great art of having as little misery and as much happiness as possible.

Every being is in search of truth, but small fears go on preventing you.

The mob is man voluntarily descending to the nature of the beast. Its fit hour of activity is night. Its actions are insane like its whole constitution. It persecutes a principle; it would whip a right; it would tar and feather justice, by inflicting fire and outrage upon the houses and persons of those who have these. It resembles the prank of boys, who run with fire-engines to put out the ruddy aurora streaming to the stars.

A friend is one who incessantly pays us the compliment of expecting from us all the virtues, and who can appreciate them in us. The friend asks no return but that his friend will religiously accept and wear and not disgrace his apotheosis of him. They cherish each other’s hopes. They are kind to each other’s dreams.

He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire.

The value of a principle is the number of things it will explain.

I have never taken any exercise except sleeping and resting.

I think I should have no other mortal wants, if I could always have plenty of music. It seems to infuse strength into my limbs and ideas into my brain. Life seems to go on without effort, when I am filled with music.