Mark Twain

Write without pay until somebody offers to pay you. If nobody offers within three years, sawing wood is what you were intended for.

Forget and forgive. This is not difficult when properly understood. It means forget inconvenient duties, then forgive yourself for forgetting. By rigid practice and stern determination, it comes easy.

If man had created man, he would be ashamed of his performance.

More than once I had seen a noble who had gotten his enemy at a disadvantage stop to pray before cutting his throat.

Of all God’s creatures there is only one that cannot be made the slave of the lash. That one is the cat. If man could be crossed with a cat it would improve man, but it would deteriorate the cat.

I don’t know of a single foreign product that enters this country untaxed, except the answer to prayer.

We like a man to come right out and say what he thinks, if we agree with him.

Having the fewest wants, I am nearest to the gods.

It is as natural to die as to be born; and to a little infant, perhaps, the one is as painful as the other.

The soul of God is poured into the world through the thoughts of men.

It is lamentable, that to be a good patriot one must become the enemy of the rest of mankind.

Renunciation remains sorrow, though a sorrow borne willingly.

Martyrdom is the only way a man can become famous without ability.

Cities give us collision. ‘Tis said, London and New York take the nonsense out of a man.

Let your literary compositions be kept from the public eye for nine years at least.

All mankind love a lover.

In the word of no master am I bound to believe.

You teach your daughters the diameters of the planets and wonder when you are done that they do not delight in your company.

Men being born with a title to perfect freedom and uncontrolled enjoyment of all the rights and privileges of the law of nature . . . no one can be put out of his estate and subjected to the political view of another, without his consent.

There is only one failure in life possible, and that is not to be true to the best one knows.

Everything that is made beautiful and fair and lovely is made for the eye of one who sees.