Mark Twain

Better a broken promise than none at all.

Let us make a special effort to stop communicating with each other, so we can have some conversation.

It ain’t those parts of the Bible that I can’t understand that bother me, it is the parts that I do understand.

If you hold a cat by the tail you learn things you cannot learn any other way.

Forget and forgive. This is not difficult when properly understood. It means forget inconvenient duties, then forgive yourself for forgetting. By rigid practice and stern determination, it comes easy.

It’s not the size of the dog in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the dog.

Use, do not abuse; neither abstinence nor excess ever renders man happy.

You can tell a lot about a person by listening to the way they talk about someone they once loved.

Men talk as if victory were something fortunate. Work is victory.

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

Nothing in life is more liberating than to fight for a cause larger than yourself, something that encompasses you but is not defined by your existence alone.

Concentration is the secret of strength in politics, in war, in trade, in short, in all the management of human affairs.

I always feel excited when I can do something that’s about what I believe in.

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

I want someone with the proven strength to persevere, someone who knows this job and takes it seriously, someone who understands that the issues a president faces are not black and white and cannot be boiled down to 140 characters.

Where you stand depends on where you sit.

Every man is guilty of all the good he did not do.

The responsibility of tolerance lies in those who have the wider vision.

A healthy body is a guest chamber for the soul: a sick body is a prison.

Plenty of times I wanted to haul off when somebody insulted me for the color of my skin, but I had to hold to myself. I knew I was kind of an experiment. The whole thing was bigger than me.

I have received no more than one or two letters in my life that were worth the postage.