Mark Twain

If the desire to kill and the opportunity to kill came always together, who would escape hanging?

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!

Loyalty to petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul.

Humor is mankind’s greatest blessing.

In a good bookroom you feel in some mysterious way that you are absorbing the wisdom contained in all the books through your skin, without even opening them.

It is at our mother’s knee that we acquire our noblest and truest and highest ideals, but there is seldom any money in them.

Blame is safer than praise.

Clever tyrants are never punished.

Looking? Found someone you have, eh?

Suspicion amongst thoughts are like bats amongst birds, they never fly by twilight.

To be, or not to be; that is the bare bodkin That makes calamity of so long life;

Excellence must be pursued, it must be wooed with all of one’s might and every bit of effort that we have each day there’s a new encounter, each week is a new challenge.

The soul is pure when it leaves the body and drags nothing bodily with it, by virtue of having no willing association with the body in life but avoiding it… Practicing philosophy in the right way is a training to die easily.

Talent for talent’s sake is a bauble and a show. Talent working with joy in the cause of universal truth lifts the possessor to new power as a benefactor.

I hate a fellow whom pride, or cowardice, or laziness drives into a corner, and who does nothing when he is there but sit and growl; let him come out as I do, and bark.

Croesus said to Cambyses; That peace was better than war; because in peace the sons did bury their fathers, but in wars the fathers did bury their sons.

Though wisdom cannot be gotten for gold, still less can be gotten without it.

Many might go to Heaven with half the labor they go to hell.

Always two there are, no more, no less. A master and an apprentice.

I always forgive others. The anger; sadness; frustration; pain, whatever feelings I felt, no matter the hurt; the tears, I always found understanding and reason to forgive them; to not hold onto it; to not resent them. But there is one, who I never seem to be able to give absolution, and that’s myself.

Duties are not performed for duty’s sake, but because their neglect would make the man uncomfortable. A man performs but one duty -the duty of contenting his spirit, the duty of making himself agreeable to himself.