Mark Twain

Many a small thing has been made large by the right kind of advertising.

It is better to deserve honors and not have them than to have them and not deserve them.

Habit is habit, and not to be flung out of the window by any man, but coaxed downstairs a step at a time.

The man who is ostentatious of his modesty is twin to the statue that wears a fig-leaf.

Just the omission of Jane Austen’s books alone would make a fairly good library out of a library that hadn’t a book in it.

I refused to attend his funeral. But I wrote a very nice letter explaining that I approved of it.

But real action is in silent moments. The epochs of our life are not in the visible facts of our choice of a calling, our marriage, our acquisition of an office, and the like, but in a silent thought by the wayside as we walk; in a thought which revises our entire manner of life, and says.

What lies behind you and what lies in front of you, pales in comparison to what lies inside of you.

He then learns that in going down into the secrets of his own mind he has descended into the secrets of all minds.

Judges ought to be more learned than witty, more reverent than plausible, and more advised than confident. Above all things, integrity is their portion and proper virtue.

He is now rising from affluence to poverty.

Perhaps man is the only being that can properly be called idle.

The man who is a pessimist before 48 knows too much; if he is an optimist after it, he knows too little.

As to the adjective, when in doubt strike it out.

If life must not be taken too seriously, then so neither must death.

All progress is based upon a universal innate desire on the part of every organism to live beyond its income.

Let your character be kept up the very end, just as it began, and so be consistent.

A patronizing disposition always has its meaner side.

Rest in reason; move in passion.

The camera can represent flesh so superbly that, if I dared, I would never photograph a figure without asking that figure to take its clothes off.

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.