Mark Twain

Between us, we cover all knowledge; he knows all that can be known and I know the rest.

There is a charm about the forbidden that makes it unspeakably desirable.

The radical of one century is the conservative of the next. The radical invents the views. When he has worn them out, the conservative adopts them.

Be virtuous and you will be eccentric.

In the beginning of a change the patriot is a scarce man, and brave, and hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a patriot.

The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large mattertis the difference between the lightning-bug and the lightning.

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

Do not waste your time on Social Questions. What is the matter with the poor is Poverty; what is the matter with the rich is Uselessness.

It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinions; it is easy in solitude to live after your own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.

He tosses aside his paint-pots and his words a foot and a half long.

Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example.

In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.

We have reached a point today where labor-saving devices are good only when they do not throw the worker out of his job.

You may drive out nature with a pitchfork, yet she’ll be constantly running back.

Practice is this life, and realization is this life, and this life is revealed right here and now.

The quickest way to become troubled is to be concerned with what people are gonna say about your life and your work.

One of the lessons that I grew up with was to always stay true to yourself, and never let what somebody else says distract you from your goals.

The pleasure we feel in music springs from the obedience which is in it.

Remember where you came from.

Blessed is the influence of one true, loving human soul on another.

If there is any period one would desire to be born in, is it not the age of Revolution; when the old and the new stand side by side, and admit of being compared; when the energies of all men are searched by fear and by hope; when the historic glories of the old can be compensated by the rich possibilities of the new era?