Mark Twain

If He Tom Sawyer had been a great and wise philosopher, like the writer of this book, he would now have comprehended that Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do and Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.

Humor must not professedly teach and it must not professedly preach, but it must do both if it would live forever.

By law of periodical repetition, everything which has happened once must happen again and again – and not capriciously, but at regular periods, and each thing in its own period, not another’s and each obeying its own law.

People are much more willing to lend you books than bookcases.

Monarchies, aristocracies, and religions are all based upon that large defect in your race – the individual’s distrust of his neighbor, and his desire, for safety’s or comfort’s sake, to stand well in his neighbor’s eye. These institutions will always remain, and always flourish, and always oppress you, affront you, and degrade you, because you will always be and remain slaves of minorities. There was never a country where the majority of the people were in their secret hearts loyal to any of these institutions.

I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened.

Nothing goes by luck in composition. It allows of no tricks. The best you can write will be the best you are.

You find no man, at all intellectual, who is willing to leave London. No, Sir, when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford.

Of all noises, I think music is the least disagreeable.

Age appears to be best in four things; old wood best to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust, and old authors to read.

He has been a doctor a year now and has had two patients, no, three, I think – yes, it was three; I attended their funerals.

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.

I am admonished in many ways that time is pushing me inexorably along. I am approaching the threshold of age; in 1977 I shall be 142. This is no time to be flitting about the earth. I must cease from the activities proper to youth and begin to take on the dignities and gravities and inertia proper to that season of honorable senility which is on its way.

You will find only what you bring in.

Women are like tea bags. You never know how strong they are until they are in hot water.

Far too many executives have become more concerned with the four P’s – pay, perks, power and prestige – rather than making profits for shareholders.

I only desire sincere relations with the worthiest of my acquaintance, that they may give me an opportunity once in a year to speak the truth.

There is a tendency for things to right themselves.

The quieter you become, you more you are able to hear.

A broad margin of leisure is as beautiful in a man’s life as in a book. Haste makes waste, no less in life than in housekeeping. Keep the time, observe the hours of the universe, not of the cars.

Reasonable people adapt themselves to the world. Unreasonable people attempt to adapt the world to themselves. All progress, therefore, depends on unreasonable people.