Mark Twain

Drag your thoughts away from your troubles… by the ears, by the heels, or any other way you can manage it.

To be good is noble, but to teach others how to be good is nobler and less trouble.

Peace by persuasion has a pleasant sound, but I think we should not be able to work it. We should have to tame the human race first, and history seems to show that that cannot be done.

Let us not be too particular; it is better to have old secondhand diamonds than none at all.

Thou shalt not commit adultry is a command which makes no distinction between the following persons. They are all required to obey it: children at birth. Children in the cradle. School children. Youths and maidens. Fresh adults. Older ones. Men and women of 40. Of 50. Of 60. Of 70. Of 80. Of 100. The command does not distribute its burden equally, and cannot. It is not hard upon the three sets of children.

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.

Truth is the daughter of time, not of authority.

All endeavor calls for the ability to tramp the last mile, shape the last plan, endure the last hours toil. The fight to the finish spirit is the one… characteristic we must posses if we are to face the future as finishers.

For disappointments, that come not by our own folly, they are the trials or corrections of Heaven: and it is our own fault, if they prove not our advantage.

Ready are you? What know you of ready?

The ancient Romans built their greatest masterpieces of architecture, their amphitheaters, for wild beasts to fight in.

I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.

The world is full of hopeful analogies and handsome, dubious eggs, called possibilities.

Time dissipates to shining ether the solid angularity of facts.

Kings are not born they are made by universal hallucination.

When one has tasted it Watermelon he knows what the angels eat.

Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.

The nearest way to glory is to strive to be what you wish to be thought to be.

His honest, patronizing pride in the good-will and respect of everybody about him was a safeguard even against foolish romance, still more against a lower kind of folly.

Life too near paralyses art.

A graceful and pleasing figure is a perpetual letter of recommendation.