Mark Twain

Under certain circumstances, profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer.

What, sir, would the people of the earth be without woman? They would be scarce, sir, almighty scarce.

In Nevada, for a time, the lawyer, the editor, the banker, the chief desperado, the chief gambler, and the saloon-keeper occupied the same level of society, and it was the highest.

There is a charm about the forbidden that makes it unspeakably desirable.

Everything has its limit – iron ore cannot be educated into gold.

New Orleans food is as delicious as the less criminal forms of sin.

The best reformers the world has ever seen are those who commence on themselves.

There are men whose manners have the same essential splendor as the simple and awful sculpture on the friezes of the Parthenon, and the remains of the earliest Greek art.

Where you stand depends on where you sit.

What greater thing is there for two human souls than to feel that they are joined – to strengthen each other – to be at one with each other in silent unspeakable memories.

The very impossibility in which I find myself to prove that God is not, discovers to me his existence.

All I want to do is change the world.

Resolve not to be poor: whatever you have, spend less. Poverty is a great enemy to human happiness; it certainly destroys liberty, and it makes some virtues impracticable, and others extremely difficult.

Fear defeats more people than any other one thing in the world.

When Nature has work to be done, she creates a genius to do it.

It happened once that a youth and a maiden beheld each other in a public assembly for the first time

The hearing ear is always found close to the speaking tongue; and no genius can long or often utter anything which is not invited and gladly entertained by men around him.

It is better to suffer wrong than to do it, and happier to be sometimes cheated than not to trust.

Vulgarity in a king flatters the majority of the nation.

Life will not bear refinement. You must do as other people do.

To hold a pen is to be at war.