Mark Twain

The older we grow the greater becomes our wonder at how much ignorance one can contain without bursting one’s clothes.

Do not undervalue the headache. While it is at its sharpest it seems a bad investment; but when relief begins, the unexpired remainder is worth $4 a minute.

Whiskey is for drinking; water is for fighting over.

All say, How hard it is that we have to die – a strange complaint to come from the mouths of people who have had to live.

The first half of life consists of the capacity to enjoy without the chance; the last half consists of the chance without the capacity.

Any so-called material thing that you want is merely a symbol: you want it not for itself, but because it will content your spirit for the moment.

A human life, I think, should be well rooted in some area of native land where it may get the love of tender kinship from the earth, for the labors men go forth to, for the sounds and accents that haunt it, for whatever will give that early home a familiar unmistakable difference amidst the future widening of knowledge. The best introduction to astronomy is to think of the nightly heavens as a little lot of stars belonging to one’s own homestead.

What, then, is the true Gospel of consistency? Change. Who is the really consistent man? The man who changes. Since change is the law of his being, he cannot be consistent if he stick in a rut.

There is a difference between being convinced and being stubborn.

Common sense is the best distributed thing in the world, for we all think we possess a good share of it.

We judge of man’s wisdom by his hope.

Thunder is good, thunder is impressive; but it is lightning that does the work.

I heartily accept the motto,That government is best which governs least; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which I also believe,That government is best which governs not at all; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have. Government is at best but an expedient; but most governments are usually, and all governments are sometimes, inexpedient.

It’s not whether you get knocked down, its whether you get back up.

These are not dark days: these are great days – the greatest days our country has ever lived.

Evolution is the law of policies: Darwin said it, Socrates endorsed it, Cuvier proved it and established it for all time in his paper on The Survival of the Fittest. These are illustrious names, this is a mighty doctrine: nothing can ever remove it from its firm base, nothing dissolve it, but evolution.

The Public is merely a multiplied “me”.

Self-preservation is the first law of nature.

Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined.

If a man can write a better book, preach a better sermon, or make a better mousetrap, than his neighbor, though he build his house in the woods, the world will make a beaten path to his door.

Shall we then judge a country by the majority, or by the minority? By the minority, surely. ‘Tis pedantry to estimate nations by the census, or by square miles of land, or other than by their importance to the mind of the time.