Mark Twain

Switzerland is simply a large, lumpy, solid rock with a thin skin of grass stretched over it.

We never become really and genuinely our entire and honest selves until we are dead – and not then until we have been dead years and years. People ought to start dead and then they would be honest so much earlier.

Why is it that we rejoice at a birth and grieve at a funeral? It is because we are not the person involved.

I know all those people. I have friendly, social, and criminal relations with the whole lot of them.

My parents were neither very poor nor conspicuously honest.

The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.

If you protect a man from folly, you will soon have a nation of fools.

The perception of beauty is a moral test.

Strange, that some of us, with quick alternate vision, see beyond our infatuations, and even while we rave on the heights, behold the wide plain where our persistent self pauses and awaits us.

The value of a principle is the number of things it will explain; and there is no good theory of disease which does not at once suggest a cure.

Would not love see returning penitence afar off, and fall on its neck and kiss it?

The possibilities are numerous once we decide to act and not react.

Everything’s fine today, that is our illusion.

Poetry puts starch in your backbone so you can stand, so you can compose your life.

All my life affection has been showered upon me, and every forward step I have made has been taken in spite of it.

Courageous people do not fear forgiving, for the sake of peace.

Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood.

Work and play are words used to describe the same thing under differing conditions.

The real satisfaction which praise can afford, is when what is repeated aloud agrees with the whispers of conscience, by showing us that we have not endeavored to deserve well in vain.

To know, is to know that you know nothing. That is the meaning of true knowledge.

If you are always trying to be normal you will never know how amazing you can be.