Mark Twain

I take my only exercise acting as a pallbearer at the funerals of my friends who exercise regularly.

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

My mother had a great deal of trouble with me, but I think she enjoyed it.

Annihilation has no terrors for me, because I have already tried it before I was born -a hundred million years -and I have suffered more in an hour, in this life, than I remember to have suffered in the whole hundred million years put together. There was a peace, a serenity, an absence of all sense of responsibility, an absence of worry, an absence of care, grief, perplexity; and the presence of a deep content and unbroken satisfaction in that hundred million years of holiday which I look back upon with a tender longing and with a grateful desire to resume, when the opportunity comes.

George Washington, as a boy, was ignorant of the commonest accomplishments of youth. He could not even lie.

There is no God, no universe, no human race, no earthly life, no heaven, no hell. It is all a dream, a grotesque and foolish dream. Nothing exists but you. And you are but a thought -a vagrant thought, a useless thought, a homeless thought, wandering forlorn among the empty eternities!

The generative energy, which, when we are loose, dissipates and makes us unclean, when we are continent invigorates and inspires us. Chastity is the flowering of man; and what are called Genius, Heroism, Holiness, and the like, are but various fruits which succeed it.

Among all forms of mistake, prophecy is the most gratuitous.

If your compassion does not include yourself, it is incomplete.

The greatest meliorator of the world is selfish, huckstering Trade.

A weed is a plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered.

Every man will be a poet if he can; otherwise a philosopher or man of science. This proves the superiority of the poet.

Condense some daily experience into a glowing symbol and an audience is electrified.

There is no character, howsoever good and fine, but it can be destroyed by ridicule, howsoever poor and witless. Observe the ass, for instance: his character is about perfect, he is the choicest spirit among all the humbler animals, yet see what ridicule has brought him to. Instead of feeling complimented when we are called an ass, we are left in doubt.

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.

Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle. And so we must straighten our backs and work for our freedom. A man can’t ride you unless your back is bent.

Reality is a sliding door.

Damn the subjunctive. It brings all our writers to shame.

Do that which is assigned to you and you cannot hope too much or dare too much.

I showed my appreciation of my native land in the usual Irish way: by getting out of it as soon as I possibly could.

A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.