Mark Twain

I believe that our Heavenly Father invented man because he was disappointed in the monkey.

If man could be crossed with the cat, it would improve man but deteriorate the cat.

We are always too busy for our children; we never give them the time or interest they deserve. We lavish gifts upon them; but the most precious gift, our personal association, which means so much to them, we give grudgingly.

Often it does seem a pity that Noah and his party did not miss the boat.

I haven’t any right to criticize books, and I don’t do it except when I hate them. I often want to criticize Jane Austen, but her books madden me so that I can’t conceal my frenzy from the reader; and therefore I have to stop every time I begin. Every time I read Pride and Prejudice I want to dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone.

It is not best that we should all think alike; it is difference of opinion that make horseraces.

The betrothed and accepted lover has lost the wildest charms of his maiden by her acceptance. She was heaven while he pursued her, but she cannot be heaven if she stoops to one such as he!

Virtue is insufficient temptation.

Science does not know its debt to imagination.

Obscurity and competence: That is the life that is worth living.

Any enlightenment which requires to be authenticated, certified, recognized, congratulated, is false, or at least incomplete.

Believing that I was born for the service of mankind, and regarding the care of the commonwealth as a kind of common property which, like the air and the water, belongs to everybody, I set myself to consider in what way mankind might be best served, and what service I was myself best fitted by nature to perform.

Such as take lodgings in a head that’s to be let unfurnished.

He presents me with what is always an acceptable gift who brings me news of a great thought before unknown. He enriches me without impoverishing himself.

Suspicion amongst thoughts are like bats amongst birds, they never fly by twilight.

Life is a festival only to the wise.

We must always think about things, and we must think about things as they are, not as they are said to be.

I believe that every person is born with talent.

If you find it in your heart to care for somebody else, you will have succeeded.

She is but half a wife that is not, nor is capable of being, a friend.

I found you essay to be good and original. However, the part that was original was not good and the part that was good was not original.