Mark Twain

As a thinker and planner the ant is the equal of any savage race of men; as a self-educated specialist in several arts she is the superior of any savage race of men; and in one or two high mental qualities she is above the reach of any man, savage or civilized!

Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.

The cat, having sat upon a hot stove lid, will not sit upon a hot stove lid again. But he won’t sit upon a cold stove lid, either.

I can teach anybody how to get what they want out of life. The problem is that I can’t find anybody who can tell me what they want.

I never could keep a promise. I do not blame myself for this weakness, because the fault must lie in my physical organization. It is likely that such a very liberal amount of space was given to the organ which enables me to make promises that the organ which should enable me to keep them was crowded out. But I grieve not. I like no half-way things. I had rather have one faculty nobly developed than two faculties of mere ordinary capacity.

Man will do many things to get himself loved, he will do all things to get himself envied.

In all pointed sentences, some degree of accuracy must be sacrificed to conciseness.

We may not pay Satan reverence, for that would be indiscreet, but we can at least respect his talents.

Of all virtues and dignities of the mind, goodness is the greatest, being the character of the Deity; and without it, man is a busy, mischievous, wretched thing.

The fibers of all things have their tension and are strained like the strings of an instrument.

Words are alive; cut them and they bleed.

Our humanity is a poor thing, except for the divinity that stirs within us.

Their learning is like bread in a besieged town: every man gets a little, but no man gets a full meal.

In the arts of life man invents nothing; but in the arts of death he outdoes Nature herself, and produces by chemistry and machinery all the slaughter of plague, pestilence, and famine.

Criticism, as it was first instituted by Aristotle, was meant as a standard of judging well.

The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them.

I don’t want to talk grammar. I want to talk like a lady.

Nothing is worth doing unless the consequences may be serious.

The wonder is always new that any sane man can be a sailor.

The poets did well to conjoin music and medicine, because the office of medicine is but to tune the curious harp of man’s body.

Englishmen hate Liberty and Equality too much to understand them. But every Englishman loves a pedigree.