Mark Twain

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

We are discreet sheep; we wait to see how the drove is going, and then go with the drove.

Never do wrong when people are looking.

We have a criminal jury system which is superior to any in the world; and its efficiency is only marred by the difficulty of finding twelve men every day who don’t know anything and can’t read.

If to be interesting is to be uncommonplace, it is becoming a question, with me, if there are any commonplace people.

The cross of the Legion of Honor has been conferred on me. However, few escape that distinction.

There is nothing that can be changed more completely than human nature when the job is taken in hand early enough.

Nothing so needs reforming as other people’s habits.

Do what good thou canst unknown, and be not vain of what ought rather to be felt than seen.

The advice that is wanted is commonly not welcome and that which is not wanted, evidently an effrontery.

Raise your words, not your voice. It is rain that grows flowers, not thunder.

To hold a pen is to be at war.

The man who can make hard things easy is the educator.

If a man be gracious and courteous to strangers, it shows he is a citizen of the world.

Except during the nine months before he draws his first breath, no man manages his affairs as well as a tree does.

Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere. They’re in each other all along.

Justice cannot be for one side alone, but must be for both.

Many of the phenomena of Winter are suggestive of an inexpressible tenderness and fragile delicacy. We are accustomed to hear this king described as a rude and boisterous tyrant; but with the gentleness of a lover he adorns the tresses of Summer.

Virtue knows that it is impossible to get on without compromise, and tunes herself, as it were, a trifle sharp to allow for an inevitable fall in playing.

He who is not everyday conquering some fear has not learned the secret of life.

Humanity has unquestionably one really effective weapon