Mark Twain

It is not best that we should all think alike; it is a difference of opinion that makes horse races.

There are people who can do all fine and heroic things but one – keep from telling their happiness to the unhappy.

There was never a century nor a country that was short of experts who knew the Deity’s mind and were willing to reveal it.

Work and play are words used to describe the same thing under differing conditions.

There are German songs which can make a stranger to the language cry.

In his private heart no man much respects himself.

There is only one good – knowledge; and only one evil – ignorance.

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

I did not wish to take a cabin passage, but rather to go before the mast and on the deck of the world, for there I could best see the moonlight amid the mountains. I do not wish to go below now.

The habit of looking on the best side of every event is worth more than a thousand pounds a years.

All the things that truly matter, beauty, love, creativity, joy and inner peace arise from beyond the mind.

Necessity, who is the mother of invention.

Can anything be so elegant as to have few wants, and to serve them one’s self?

No man can be a pure specialist without being in the strict sense an idiot.

Do not do to others what angers you if done to you by others.

The spirit of our American radicalism is destructive and aimless; it is not loving; it has no ulterior and divine ends; but is destructive only out of hatred and selfishness.

Philosophy when superficially studied, excites doubt, when thoroughly explored, it dispels it.

But what we call our despair is often only the painful eagerness of unfed hope.

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

It is a brave thing to have courage to be an individual; it is also, perhaps, a lonely thing. But it is better than not being an individual, which is to be nobody at all.

Finish each day before you begin the next, and interpose a solid wall of sleep between the two. This you cannot do without temperance.