Mark Twain

France has neither winter nor summer nor morals. Apart from these drawbacks it is a fine country.

Man – a creature made at the end of the week’s work when God was tired.

The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.

Don’t part with your illusions. When they are gone you may still exist, but you have ceased to live.

No sinner is ever saved after the first twenty minutes of a sermon.

Always do what is right. It will gratify half of mankind and astound the other.

Coffee is good for talent, but genius wants prayer.

Is not marriage an open question, when it is alleged, from the beginning of the world, that such as are in the institution wish to get out, and such as are out wish to get in?

The quality of strength lined with tenderness is an unbeatable combination, as are intelligence and necessity when unblunted by formal education.

Heaven is the work of the best and kindest men and women. Hell is the work of prigs, pedants and professional truth-tellers. The world is an attempt to make the best of Heaven and Hell.

We are just statistics, born to consume resources.

I heartily accept the motto,That government is best which governs least; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which I also believe,That government is best which governs not at all; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have. Government is at best but an expedient; but most governments are usually, and all governments are sometimes, inexpedient.

Blows are sarcasm’s turned stupid.

There is one topic peremptorily forbidden to all well-bred, to all rational mortals, namely, their distempers. If you have not slept, or if you have slept, or if you have headache, or sciatica, or leprosy, or thunder-stroke, I beseech you, by all angels, to hold your peace, and not pollute the morning.

How some of the writers I come across get through their books without dying of boredom is beyond me.

Still, if you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed; if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than live as slaves.

That after an hour’s silence he can say, The one thing I cannot stand is dampness… That’s all, it took him an hour to work that out.

Many people will walk in and out of your life, but only true friends will leave footprints in your heart.

Life isn’t as serious as the mind makes it out to be.

I have never found a companion that was so companionable as solitude.

It does not need that a poem should be long. Every word was once a poem. Every new relationship is a new word.