Mark Twain

Never learn to do anything. If you don’t learn, you will always find someone else to do it for you.

I cannot see how a man of any large degree of humorous perception can ever be religious – except he purposely shut the eyes of his mind and keep them shut by force.

Repartee is something we think of twenty-four hours too late.

The fact that man knows right from wrong proves his intellectual superiority to other creatures; but the fact that he can do wrong proves his moral inferiority to any creature that cannot.

The person that had took a bull by the tail once had learnt sixty or seventy times as much as a person that hadn’t, and said a person that started in to carry a cat home by the tail was getting knowledge that was always going to be useful to him, and warn’t ever going to grow dim or doubtful. Chances are, he isn’t likely to carry the cat that way again, either. But if he wants to, I say let him!

The cat, having sat upon a hot stove lid, will not sit upon a hot stove lid again. But he won’t sit upon a cold stove lid, either.

Prejudice is a burden that confuses the past, threatens the future and renders the present inaccessible.

I believe in things that are developed through hard work. I always like people who have developed long and hard, especially through introspection and a lot of dedication. I think what they arrive at is usually a much deeper and more beautiful thing than the person who seems to have that ability and fluidity from the beginning. I say this because it’s a good message to give to young talents who feel as I used to.

No man is much regarded by the rest of the world. He that considers how little he dwells upon the condition of others, will learn how little the attention of others is attracted by himself. While we see multitudes passing before us, of whom perhaps not one appears to deserve our notice or excites our sympathy, we should remember, that we likewise are lost in the same throng, that the eye which happens to glance upon us is turned in a moment on him that follows us, and that the utmost which we can reasonably hope or fear is to fill a vacant hour with prattle, and be forgotten.

The first thing a great person does, is make us realize the insignificance of circumstance.

Never allow a person to tell you no who doesn’t have the power to say yes.

The less you open your heart to others, the more your heart suffers.

Named must your fear be before banish it you can.

It is tact that is golden, not silence.

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.

To find yourself, think for yourself.

Don’t call a woman a bitch. Call her an ass-hole. It still gets your point across and it’s not sexist.

The roses under my window make no reference to former roses or better ones; they are what they are; they exist with God today. There is no time to them. There is simply the rose; it is perfect in every moment of its existence.

A good memory and a tongue tied in the middle is a combination which gives immortality to conversation.

He that gives good advice builds with one hand; he that gives good counsel and example builds with both.

A toddling little girl is a center of common feeling which makes the most dissimilar people understand each other.