Mark Twain

In the first place, God made idiots. That was for practice. Then he made school boards.

I don’t like to commit myself about heaven and hell – you see, I have friends in both places.

Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint.

Lord save us all from a hope tree that has lost the faculty of putting out blossoms.

I was young and foolish then; now I am old and foolisher.

Suppose you were an idiot, and suppose you were a member of congress; but I repeat myself.

He then learns that in going down into the secrets of his own mind he has descended into the secrets of all minds.

Conversation enriches the understanding; but solitude is the school of genius.

We learn from experience that men never learn anything from experience.

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.

I’ve learned that from my husband, that sort of, you know, ability to not get too high or too low with changes and bumps in the road.

The first of April is the day we remember what we are the other 364 days of the year.

Don’t learn to do, but learn in doing. Let your falls not be on a prepared ground, but let them be bona fide falls in the rough and tumble of the world.

The profoundest thought or passion sleeps as in a mine, until an equal mind and heart finds and publishes it.

Every man is an impossibility until he is born.

The wretched have no compassion, they can do good only from strong principles of duty.

Enthusiasm is the mother of effort, and without it nothing great was ever achieved.

Why was the human race created? Or at least why wasn’t something creditable created in place of it? God had His opportunity. He could have made a reputation. But no, He must commit this grotesque folly – a lark which must have cost Him a regret or two when He came to think it over and observe effects.

The sun is but a morning star.

Let a man then know his worth, and keep things under his feet. Let him not peep or steal, or skulk up and down with the air of a charity-boy, a bastard, or an interloper.

Monarchies, aristocracies, and religions are all based upon that large defect in your race – the individual’s distrust of his neighbor, and his desire, for safety’s or comfort’s sake, to stand well in his neighbor’s eye. These institutions will always remain, and always flourish, and always oppress you, affront you, and degrade you, because you will always be and remain slaves of minorities. There was never a country where the majority of the people were in their secret hearts loyal to any of these institutions.