Mark Twain

If they had not landed there would be some reason for celebrating the fact.

To succeed in the other trades, capacity must be shown; in the law, concealment of it will do.

A banker is a fellow who lends his umbrella when the sun is shining and wants it back the minute it begins to rain.

History is strewn thick with evidence that a truth is not hard to kill, but a lie, well told, is immortal.

A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.

It is at our mother’s knee that we acquire our noblest and truest and highest ideals, but there is seldom any money in them.

Think not those faithful who praise all thy words and actions, but those who kindly reprove thy faults.

A good and faithful judge ever prefers the honorable to the expedient.

No one can cheat you out of ultimate success but yourself.

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.

A lot of power and bravery is practice. And some of that is taking the risk to try and be at the table. And then when you’re at the table, taking that first risk to open your mouth and risk being rejected.

The hues of the opal, the light of the diamond, are not to be seen if the eye is too near.

Some natures are too good to be spoiled by praise.

It is at our mother’s knee that we acquire our noblest and truest and highest ideals, but there is seldom any money in them.

We are made happy when reason can discover no occasion for it. The memory of some past moments is more persuasive than the experience of present ones. There have been visions of such breadth and brightness that these motes were invisible in their light.

Not to be provok’d is best: But if mov’d, never correct till the Fume is spent; For every Stroke our Fury strikes, is sure to hit our selves at last.

It is seldom that the miserable of the world can help regarding their misery as a wrong inflicted by those who are less miserable.

There is a time when a man distinguishes the idea of felicity from the idea of wealth; it is the beginning of wisdom.

A stumbling block to the pessimist is a stepping-stone to the optimist.

God as now generally conceived of is only the last witch.

The spirit of our American radicalism is destructive and aimless; it is not loving; it has no ulterior and divine ends; but is destructive only out of hatred and selfishness.