Mark Twain

Unconsciously we all have a standard by which we measure other men, and if we examine closely we find that this standard is a very simple one, and is this: we admire them, we envy them, for great qualities we ourselves lack. Hero worship consists in just that. Our heroes are men who do things which we recognize, with regret, and sometimes with a secret shame, that we cannot do. We find not much in ourselves to admire, we are always privately wanting to be like somebody else. If everybody was satisfied with himself, there would be no heroes.

If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man.

Fortune knocks at every man’s door once in a life, but in a good many cases the man is in a neighboring saloon and does not hear her.

Who prays for Satan? Who, in 1,800 years, has had the common humanity to pray for the one sinner that needed it most?

A mighty porterhouse steak an inch and a half thick, hot and sputtering from the griddle; dusted with fragrant pepper; enriched with little melting bits of butter of the most impeachable freshness and genuineness; the precious juices of the meat trickling out and joining the gravy, archipelagoed with mushrooms; a township or two of tender, yellowish fat gracing an out-lying district of this ample county of beefsteak; the long white bone which divides the sirloin from the tenderloin still in its place.

Man was made at the end of the week’s work when God was tired.

The people are to be taken in small doses.

One way of getting an idea of our fellow-countrymen’s miseries is to go and look at their pleasures.

Ah! Sir, a boy’s being flogged is not so severe as a man’s having the hiss of the world against him.

All progress is based upon a universal innate desire on the part of every organism to live beyond its income.

Prudence operates on life in the same manner as rule of composition; it produces vigilance rather than elevation; rather prevents loss than procures advantage; and often miscarriages, but seldom reaches either power or honor.

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

The right word may be effective, but no word was ever as effective as a rightly timed pause.

All men make mistakes, but only wise men learn from their mistakes.

Some critics will write ‘Maya Angelou is a natural writer’ – which is right after being a natural heart surgeon.

The office of the scholar is to cheer, to raise, and to guide men by showing them facts amidst appearances. He plies the slow, unhonored, and unpaid task of observation. He is the world’s eye.

Walk as if you are kissing the Earth with your feet.

The highest compact we can make with our fellow is – Let there be truth between us two forevermore.

He was at a starting point which makes many a man’s career a fine subject for betting, if there were any gentlemen given to that amusement who could appreciate the complicated probabilities of an arduous purpose, with all the possible thwartings and furtherings of circumstance, all the niceties of inward balance, by which a man swings and makes his point or else is carried headlong.

If a man does not make new acquaintances as he advances through life, he will soon find himself left alone. A man, sir, should keep his friendship in a constant repair.

A joke, even if it be a lame one, is nowhere so keenly relished or quickly applauded as in a murder trial.