Mark Twain

It’s good sportsmanship to not pick up lost golf balls while they are still rolling.

The true charm of pedestrianism does not lie in the walking, or in the scenery, but in the talking. The walking is good to time the movement of the tongue by, and to keep the blood and the brain stirred up and active; the scenery and the woodsy smells are good to bear in upon a man an unconscious and unobtrusive charm and solace to eye and soul and sense; but the supreme pleasure comes from the talk.

I never could keep a promise. I do not blame myself for this weakness, because the fault must lie in my physical organization. It is likely that such a very liberal amount of space was given to the organ which enables me to make promises that the organ which should enable me to keep them was crowded out. But I grieve not. I like no half-way things. I had rather have one faculty nobly developed than two faculties of mere ordinary capacity.

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

The very ink with which history is written is merely fluid prejudice.

The holy passion of friendship is of so sweet and steady and loyal and enduring a nature that it will last through a whole lifetime, if not asked to lend money.

An institution is the lengthened shadow of one man.

Reading Proust isn’t just reading a book, it’s an experience and you can’t reject an experience.

Fidelity has enfranchised slaves, and adopted servants to be sons.

The pleasure we feel in music springs from the obedience which is in it.

It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong.

We have reached a point today where labor-saving devices are good only when they do not throw the worker out of his job.

To build may have to be the slow and laborious task of years. To destroy can be the thoughtless act of a single day.

There are three wants which never can be satisfied: that of the rich, who wants something more; that of the sick, who wants something different; and that of the traveler, who says, Anywhere but here.

If they had not landed there would be some reason for celebrating the fact.

There is, indeed, nothing that so much seduces reason from vigilance, as the thought of passing life with an amiable woman.

The teacher reminded us that Romes liberties were not auctioned off in a day, but were bought slowly, gradually, furtively, little by little; first with a little corn and oil for the exceedingly poor and wretched, later with corn and oil for voters who were not quite so poor, later still with corn and oil for pretty much every man that had a vote to sellexactly our own history over again.

Lest I keep my complacent way I must remember somewhere out there a person died for me today. As long as there must be war, I ask and I must answer was I worth dying for?

Tell me who your heroes are and I’ll tell you who you’ll turn out to be.

Genial manners are good, and power of accommodation to any circumstance, but the high prize of life, the crowning fortune of a man is to be born with a bias to some pursuit, which finds him in employment and happiness, — whether it be to make baskets, or broadswords, or canals, or statutes, or songs. I doubt not this was the meaning of Socrates, when he pronounced artists the only truly wise, as being actually, not apparently so.

For my part, I consider that it will be found much better by all parties to leave the past to history, especially as I propose to write that history myself.