Mark Twain

Always acknowledge a fault. This will throw those in authority off their guard and give you an opportunity to commit more.

I would rather have my ignorance than another man’s knowledge, because I have so much of it.

There is a charm about the forbidden that makes it unspeakably desirable.

I never could keep a promise. I do not blame myself for this weakness, because the fault must lie in my physical organization. It is likely that such a very liberal amount of space was given to the organ which enables me to make promises that the organ which should enable me to keep them was crowded out. But I grieve not. I like no half-way things. I had rather have one faculty nobly developed than two faculties of mere ordinary capacity.

Thunder is good, thunder is impressive; but it is lightning that does the work.

There was never yet an uninteresting life. Such a thing is an impossibility. Inside of the dullest exterior there is a drama, a comedy, and a tragedy.

Sometimes if I see negative things it really doesn’t faze me, because you’ve got to be tough and you’ve got to be you.

Love can often be misguided and do as much harm as good, but respect can do only good. It assumes that the other person’s stature is as large as one’s own, his rights as reasonable, his needs as important.

All the variety, all the charm, all the beauty of life is made up of light and shadow.

Questioning is not the mode of conversation among gentlemen.

You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment. Fools stand on their island of opportunities and look toward another land. There is no other land; there is no other life but this.

I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.

Undeservedly you will atone for the sins of your fathers.

It the proof of high culture to say the greatest matters in the simplest way.

The dice of God are always loaded.

The fortune which nobody sees makes a person happy and unenvied.

No one has a prosperity so high and firm that two or three words can’t dishearten it.

People die of fright and live of confidence.

The man who forgives is far stronger than the man who fights.

It doesn’t matter who you are or what you look like as long as somebody loves you.

When you know to laugh and when to look upon things as too absurd to take seriously, the other person is ashamed to carry through even if he was serious about it.