Mark Twain

The person that had took a bull by the tail once had learnt sixty or seventy times as much as a person that hadn’t, and said a person that started in to carry a cat home by the tail was getting knowledge that was always going to be useful to him, and warn’t ever going to grow dim or doubtful. Chances are, he isn’t likely to carry the cat that way again, either. But if he wants to, I say let him!

The way it is now, the asylums can hold the sane people but if we tried to shut up the insane we would run out of building materials.

There isn’t a single human characteristic that can be safely labeled as American.

If He Tom Sawyer had been a great and wise philosopher, like the writer of this book, he would now have comprehended that Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do and Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.

Only one thing is impossible for God: To find any sense in any copyright law on the planet.

Work is a necessary evil to be avoided.

Punctuality is the virtue of the bored.

The more a thing tends to be permanent, the more it tends to be lifeless.

The love we were promised in fairy tales was never something for us to find. It has always been something for us to create.

Art hath an enemy called Ignorance.

Hard knocks have a place and value, but hard thinking goes farther in less time.

You have to be odd to be number one.

If a dog jumps in your lap, it is because he is fond of you; but if a cat does the same thing, it is because your lap is warmer.

They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.

There is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in.

Even in the presence of others he was completely alone.

When a thought is too weak to be expressed simply, simply drop it.

The fact that man knows right from wrong proves his intellectual superiority to other creatures; but the fact that he can do wrong proves his moral inferiority to any creature that cannot.

Forgiveness is just another name for freedom.

There are certain things we come into this world having to defeat.

Everyone makes mistakes. The wise are not people who never make mistakes, but those who forgive themselves and learn from their mistakes.