Mark Twain

The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.

Let us endeavor to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.

I thoroughly disapprove of duels. If a man should challenge me, I would take him kindly and forgivingly by the hand and lead him to a quiet place and kill him.

There is no distinctly American criminal class – except Congress.

Man will do many things to get himself loved, he will do all things to get himself envied.

Man is the only animal that blushes – or needs to.

A man’s action is only a picture book of his creed.

The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.

When our relatives are at home, we have to think of all their good points or it would be impossible to endure them. But when they are away, we console ourselves for their absence by dwelling on their vices.

Courage is the greatest of all virtues, because if you haven’t courage, you may not have an opportunity to use any of the others.

An honest man is always a child.

An apology for the devil: it must be remembered that we have heard one side of the case. God has written all the books.

Give no bounties: make equal laws: secure life and prosperity and you need not give alms.

It seems to me we can never give up longing and wishing while we are thoroughly alive. There are certain things we feel to be beautiful and good, and we must hunger after them.

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.

Youth, which is forgiven everything, forgives itself nothing: age, which forgives itself everything, is forgiven nothing.

There is nothing you can say in answer to a compliment. I have been complimented myself a great many times, and they always embarrass me-I always feel that they have not said enough.

Principles aren’t of much account anyway, except at election time. After that you hang them up to let them season.

I enjoy convalescence. It is the part that makes the illness worth while.

Reading Proust isn’t just reading a book, it’s an experience and you can’t reject an experience.

Between persons of equal income there is no social distinction except the distinction of merit. Money is nothing: character, conduct, and capacity are everything. There would be great people and ordinary people and little people, but the great would always be those who had done great things, and never the idiots whose mothers had spoiled them and whose fathers had left them a hundred thousand a year; and the little would be persons of small minds and mean characters, and not poor persons who had never had a chance. That is why idiots are always in favor of inequality of income (their only chance of eminence), and the really great in favor of equality.