Mark Twain

To succeed in the other trades, capacity must be shown; in the law, concealment of it will do.

In Nevada, for a time, the lawyer, the editor, the banker, the chief desperado, the chief gambler, and the saloon-keeper occupied the same level of society, and it was the highest.

Thou shalt not commit adultry is a command which makes no distinction between the following persons. They are all required to obey it: children at birth. Children in the cradle. School children. Youths and maidens. Fresh adults. Older ones. Men and women of 40. Of 50. Of 60. Of 70. Of 80. Of 100. The command does not distribute its burden equally, and cannot. It is not hard upon the three sets of children.

Truth is neither alive nor dead; it just aggravates itself all the time.

What is there that confers the noblest delight? What is that which swells a man’s breast with pride above that which any other experience can bring to him? Discovery! To know that you are walking where none others have walked; that you are beholding what human eye has not seen before; that you are breathing a virgin atmosphere. To give birth to an idea, to discover a great thought – an intellectual nugget, right under the dust of a field that many a brain-plough had gone over before. To find a new planet, to invent a new hinge, to find a way to make the lightning carry your messages. To be the first – that is the idea.

Action speaks louder than words but not nearly as often.

Every burned book enlightens the world.

The place of justice is a hallowed place.

Cities force growth and make people talkative and entertaining, but they also make them artificial.

We are armed with language adequate to describe each leaf of the filed, but not to describe human character.

We are a puny and fickle folk. Avarice, hesitation, and following are our diseases.

He who has provoked the shaft of wit, cannot complain that he smarts from it.

Being challenged in life is inevitable, being defeated is optional.

Croesus said to Cambyses; That peace was better than war; because in peace the sons did bury their fathers, but in wars the fathers did bury their sons.

Friendship is the marriage of the soul, and this marriage is liable to divorce.

Where women love each other, men learn to smother their mutual dislike.

A sect or party is an incognito devised to save man from the vexation of thinking.

Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed.

You have to accept whatever comes, and the only important thing is that you meet it with the best you have to give.

This gives force to the strong — that the multitude have no habit of self-reliance or original action.

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