Mark Twain

It’s no wonder that truth is stranger than fiction. Fiction has to make sense.

I am a democrat only on principle, not by instinct – nobody is that. Doubtless some people say they are, but this world is grievously given to lying.

That’s what an army is – a mob; they don’t fight with courage that’s born in them, but with courage that’s borrowed from their mass, and from their officers.

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.

I refused to attend his funeral. But I wrote a very nice letter explaining that I approved of it.

In Boston they ask, How much does he know? In New York, How much is he worth? In Philadelphia, Who were his parents?

The way to keep your health is to eat what you don’t want, drink what you don’t like, and do what you’d rather not.

If you injure your neighbour, better not do it by halves.

I will be conquered; I will not capitulate.

We need only travel enough to give our intellects an airing.

Our planet is being turned into a filthy and evil-smelling imperialist barrack.

Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh.

The sky was the color of hard crimson, dripping down a canvas, the moon splashed silver across red. Her soothing balm healing my soul in swathes of calmness, I breathe in her tides and let my body be washed ashore, lying in the sands of eternity.

The sum of wisdom is that time is never lost that is devoted to work.

A word once uttered can never be recalled.

A man cannot be said to succeed in this life who does not satisfy one friend.

The important work of moving the world forward does not wait to be done by perfect men.

Put on the lights there, now. Before we go any further here, has it ever occurred to any of you that all this is simply one grand misunderstanding? Since you’re not here to learn anything, but to be taught so you can pass these tests, knowledge has to be organized so it can be taught, and it has to be reduced to information so it can be organized do you follow that? In other words this leads you to assume that organization is an inherent property of knowledge itself, and that disorder and chaos are simply irrelevant forces that threaten it from outside. In fact it’s exactly the opposite. Order is simply a thin, perilous condition we try to impose on the basic reality of chaos…

The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, if they can’t find them, make them.

Men use thought only as authority for their injustice, and employ speech only to conceal their thoughts.

When you are present, you can allow the mind to be as it is without getting entangled in it.