Mark Twain

Prosperity is the best protector of principle.

He liked to like people, therefore people liked him.

Nations do not think, they only feel. They get their feelings at second hand through their temperaments, not their brains. A nation can be brought – by force of circumstances, not argument – to reconcile itself to any kind of government or religion that can be devised; in time it will fit itself to the required conditions; later it will prefer them and will fiercely fight for them.

We Americans… bear the ark of liberties of the world.

Barring that natural expression of villainy which we all have, the man looked honest enough.

Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life. The conviction of the rich that the poor are happier is no more foolish than the conviction of the poor that the rich are.

I never thought much of the courage of a lion tamer. Inside the cage he is at least safe from people.

Prosperity is the surest breeder of insolence I know.

Men cease to interest us when we find their limitations.

Knowledge is power.

Make the most of yourself, for that is all there is of you.

Whatever advice you give, be short.

I have protracted my work till most of those whom I wished to please have sunk into the grave, and success and miscarriage are empty sounds: I therefore dismiss it with frigid tranquillity, having little to fear or hope from censure or from praise.

Our chief want in life is somebody who shall make us do what we can.

Fortune is like the market, where, many times, if you can stay a little, the price will fall.

But what we call our despair is often only the painful eagerness of unfed hope.

He was at a starting point which makes many a man’s career a fine subject for betting, if there were any gentlemen given to that amusement who could appreciate the complicated probabilities of an arduous purpose, with all the possible thwartings and furtherings of circumstance, all the niceties of inward balance, by which a man swings and makes his point or else is carried headlong.

If you are good, life is good.

Lies are sufficient to breed opinion, and opinion brings on substance.

People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don’t believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and if they can’t find them, make them.

With the new day comes new strength and new thoughts.