Mark Twain

Any emotion, if it is sincere, is involuntary.

A person with a new idea is a crank until the idea succeeds.

The Pause; that impressive silence, that eloquent silence, that geometrically progressive silence which often achieves a desired effect where no combination of words, however so felicitous, could accomplish it.

Intellectual work is misnamed; it is a pleasure, a dissipation, and is its own highest reward.

When we remember that we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained.

Humor is mankind’s greatest blessing.

Personally, I’m always ready to learn, although I do not always like being taught.

Giving up smoking is the easiest thing in the world. I know because I’ve done it thousands of times.

Sometimes if I see negative things it really doesn’t faze me, because you’ve got to be tough and you’ve got to be you.

If it matters, it will hurt like knives or wrap and lift you in the most immeasurable joy. Or both. One thing is certain, you will feel intensely alive.

Which is worse? The wolf who cries before eating the lamb or the wolf who does not.

Between his consciousness and events stood always that impenetrable medium – indifference.

If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.

I dislike feeling at home when I am abroad.

We aim above the mark to hit the mark.

Wonder is the beginning of wisdom.

An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile – hoping it will eat him last.

If you develop rules, never have more than ten.

A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. Before him I may think aloud. I am arrived at last in the presence of a man so real and equal, that I may drop even those undermost garments of dissimulation, courtesy, and second thought, which men never put off, and may deal with him with the simplicity and wholeness with which one chemical atom meets another.

To do something, say something, see something, before anybody else – these are things that confer a pleasure compared with which other pleasures are tame and commonplace, other ecstasies cheap and trivial.

The first thing a great person does, is make us realize the insignificance of circumstance.