Mark Twain

To be, or not to be; that is the bare bodkin That makes calamity of so long life;

The law of God, as quite plainly expressed in woman’s construction, is this: There shall be no limit put upon your intercourse with the other sex sexually, at any time of life. During twenty-three days in every month (in the absence of pregnancy) from the time a woman is seven years old till she dies of old age, she is ready for action, and competent. As competent as the candlestick is to receive the candle. Competent every day, competent every night. Also, she wants that candle – yearns for it, longs for it, hankers after it, as commanded by the law of God in her heart.

I can live for two months on a good compliment.

When I was younger, I could remember anything, whether it had happened or not.

To cease smoking is the easiest thing I ever did. I ought to know, I’ve done it a thousand times.

My books are water; those of the great geniuses is wine. Everybody drinks water.

A crank is someone with a new idea – until it catches on.

A faith is a necessity to a man. Woe to him who believes in nothing.

A vow is a snare for sin.

We do not have to become heroes overnight. Just a step at a time, meeting each thing that comes up, seeing it as not as dreadful as it appears, discovering that we have the strength to stare it down.

Such is the state of life, that none are happy but by the anticipation of change: the change itself is nothing; when we have made it, the next wish is to change again. The world is not yet exhausted; let me see something tomorrow which I never saw before.

Drag your thoughts away from your troubles… by the ears, by the heels, or any other way you can manage it.

But who prays for Satan? Who, in eighteen centuries, has had the common humanity to pray for the one sinner that needed it most?

Nowadays the host does not admit you to his hearth, but has got the mason to build one for yourself somewhere in his alley, and hospitality is the art of keeping you at the greatest distance.

By avarice and selfishness, and a groveling habit, from which none of us is free, of regarding the soil as property, or the means of acquiring property chiefly, the landscape is deformed, husbandry is degraded with us, and the farmer leads the meanest of lives. He knows Nature but as a robber.

When a resolute young fellow steps up to the great bully, the world, and takes him boldly by the beard, he is often surprised to find it comes off in his hand, and that it was only tied on to scare away the timid adventurers.

You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers. You can tell whether a man is wise by his questions.

Knowledge comes by eyes always open and working hands; and there is no knowledge that is not power.

Work with some men is as besetting a sin as idleness.

A man’s wife has more power over him than the state has.

What could we accomplish if we knew we could not fail?