Mark Twain

Facts are stubborn, but statistics are more pliable.

It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare.

We have the best government that money can buy.

There are no grades of vanity, there are only grades of ability in concealing it.

The Public is merely a multiplied “me”.

In the first place, God made idiots. That was for practice. Then he made school boards.

It is a miserable state of mind to have few things to desire and many things to fear.

Anything too stupid to be said is sung.

Do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment.

When you know to laugh and when to look upon things as too absurd to take seriously, the other person is ashamed to carry through even if he was serious about it.

Some critics will write ‘Maya Angelou is a natural writer’ – which is right after being a natural heart surgeon.

It’s like something shifted when I spoke to you, I can’t even put words to it. This sense of gentle peace, space, lightness, freedom. The realization that the longing I carried for so long, that pain was not about him all along. It was the yearning to return to that place from which, once upon a time, we all came.

No man ever believes that the Bible means what it says: He is always convinced that it says what he means.

Anger is a brief lunacy.

What a lot of things there are a man can do without.

Usually the modest person passes for someone reserved, the silent for a sullen person

No change of circumstances can repair a defect of character.

Very learned women are to be found, in the same manner as female warriors; but they are seldom or ever inventors.

Trust yourself. You’ve survived a lot, and you’ll survive whatever is coming.

Treating your adversary with respect is giving him an advantage to which he is not entitled.

A woman is a woman, but a good cigar is a smoke.