Mark Twain

The master minds of all nations, in all ages, have sprung in affluent multitude from the mass of the nation, and from the mass of the nation only – not from its privileged classes.

The billiard table is better than the doctor.

In religion and politics people’s beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination, from authorities who have not themselves examined the questions at issue but have taken them at second-hand from other non-examiners, whose opinions about them were not worth a brass farthing.

Cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education.

All you need to be a success is ignorance and self confidence.

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

There is no daily chore so trivial that it cannot be made important by skipping it two days running.

All I have seen teaches me to trust the creator for all I have not seen.

In sculpture did ever anybody call the Apollo a fancy piece? Or say of the Laocoon how it might be made different? A masterpiece of art has in the mind a fixed place in the chain of being, as much as a plant or a crystal.

One can resist the invasion of an army, but one cannot resist the invasion of ideas.

There are people who can do all fine and heroic things but one – keep from telling their happiness to the unhappy.

There are times when one would like to hang the whole human race, and finish the farce.

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

Failure after long perseverance is much grander than never to have a striving good enough to be called a failure.

Many things difficult in design prove easy in performance.

Forgive him, for he believes that the customs of his tribe are the laws of nature!

It is the only sensual pleasure without vice.

There is no finer investment for any community than putting milk into babies.

Tomorrow is an old deceiver, and his cheat never grows stale.

The human race afraid of nothing, rushes on through every crime.

The desire of advising has a very extensive prevalence; and, since advice cannot be given but to those that will hear it, a patient listener is necessary to the accommodation of all those who desire to be confirmed in the opinion of their own wisdom: a patient listener, however, is not always to be had; the present age, whatever age is present, is so vitiated and disordered, that young people are readier to talk than to attend, and good counsel is only thrown away upon those who are full of their own perfections.