Mark Twain

Beautiful credit! The foundation of modern society. Who shall say that this is not the golden age of mutual trust, of unlimited reliance upon human promises? That is a peculiar condition of society which enables a whole nation to instantly recognize point and meaning in the familiar newspaper anecdote, which puts into the mouth of a distinguished speculator in lands and mines this remark: – I wasn’t worth a cent two years ago, and now I owe two millions of dollars.

I cannot see how a man of any large degree of humorous perception can ever be religious – except he purposely shut the eyes of his mind and keep them shut by force.

She was not quite what you would call refined. She was not quite what you would call unrefined. She was the kind of person that keeps a parrot.

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

We have the best government that money can buy.

Lord save us all from a hope tree that has lost the faculty of putting out blossoms.

Build a system that even a fool can use, and only a fool will want to use it.

The opportunity for doing mischief is found a hundred times a day, and of doing good once in a year.

I mean why should somebody go steal and break the law to get all they can when there’s always some law where you can be legal and get it all anyway!

The sons of Judah have to choose that God may again choose them. The divine principle of our race is action, choice, resolved memory.

The rich mind lies in the sun and sleeps, and is Nature.

See, I think you live on earth a certain number of times until you finish what it is that you were meant to do here. And then you go on. I don’t think I’ll be back here. I think I’m done.

What is the most rigorous law of our being? Growth. No smallest atom of our moral, mental, or physical structure can stand still a year. It grows – it must grow; nothing can prevent it.

Most of the luxuries and many of the so-called comforts of life are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind.

Nature is full of genius, full of the divinity; so that not a snowflake escapes its fashioning hand.

The highest panegyric, therefore, that private virtue can receive, is the praise of servants.

He who has made it a practice to lie and deceive his father, will be the most daring in deceiving others.

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

Every doctor will allow a colleague to decimate a whole countryside sooner than violate the bond of professional etiquette by giving him away.

Some are so very studious of learning what was done by the ancients that they know not how to live with the moderns.

My religion? Well, my dear, I am a Millionaire. That is my religion.