Mark Twain

Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.

Put all your eggs in one basket and then watch that basket.

Never do wrong when people are looking.

In the beginning of a change the patriot is a scarce man, and brave, and hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a patriot.

Any emotion, if it is sincere, is involuntary.

Wit is the sudden marriage of ideas which before their union were not perceived to have any relation.

Having each some shingles of thought well dried, we sat and whittled them.

It’s hard to have it all. And if you’re compromising through one phase of your journey, you’re not giving it all up, you’re compromising for that phase

Is not every man sometimes a radical in politics? Men are conservatives when they are least vigorous, or when they are most luxurious. They are conservatives after dinner, or before taking their rest; when they are sick, or aged. In the morning, or when their intellect or their conscience has been aroused; when they hear music, or when they read poetry, they are radicals.

There are people who can do all fine and heroic things but one – keep from telling their happiness to the unhappy.

Anything too stupid to be said is sung.

I’m only a beer teetotaler, not a champagne teetotaler.

Only a man’s character is the real criterion of worth.

Without tradition, art is a flock of sheep without a shepherd. Without innovation, it is a corpse.

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.

Sense shines with a double luster when it is set in humility. An able yet humble man is a jewel worth a kingdom.

A man of genius has been seldom ruined but by himself.

I often think that men don’t understand what is noble and what is ignorant, though they always talk about it.

There is no value in life except what you choose to place upon it and no happiness in any place except what you bring to it yourself.

Winning is not a sometime thing; it’s an all the time thing. You don’t win once in a while… you don’t do things right once in a while… you do them right all the time. Winning is habit.

In art, the hand can never execute anything higher than the heart can imagine.