Mark Twain

"A banker is a fellow who lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining and wants it back the minute it begins to rain."

"A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read."

"A good lie will have traveled half way around the world while the truth is putting on her boots."

"A home without a cat, and a well-fed, well-petted and properly revered cat may be a perfect home, perhaps, but how can it prove its title?"

"All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence, and then success is sure."

"Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest."

"Always tell the truth; then you don't have to remember anything."

"A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way."

"A powerful agent is the right word. Whenever we come upon one of those intensely right words in a book or a newspaper the resulting effect is physical as well as spiritual, and electrically prompt."

"Be careful of reading health books, you might die of a misprint."

"Be careless in your dress if you must, but keep a tidy soul."

"Be good and you will be lonesome."

"By trying, we can easily learn to endure adversity -- another man's, I mean."

"Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society."

"Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear - not absence of fear."

"Crank -- a man with a new idea until it succeeds."

"Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first."

"Drawing on my fine command of language, I said nothing."

"Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it."

"Familiarity breeds contempt -- and children."

"Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example."

"Habit is habit, and not to be flung out of the window by any man, but coaxed down-stairs a step at a time."

"Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please."

"God made the Idiot for practice, and then He made the School Board."

"Good breeding consists in concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of the other person."

"Grief can take care of itself, but to get the full value of a joy you must have somebody to divide it with."

"Hain't we got all the fools in town on our side? And hain't that a big enough majority in any town?"

"He is now rising from affluence to poverty."

"History may not repeat itself, but it does rhyme a lot."

"I am opposed to millionaires, but it would be dangerous to offer me the position."

"I must have a prodigious quantity of mind; it takes me as much as a week sometimes to make it up."

"If man could be crossed with the cat, it would improve man but deteriorate the cat."

"If there are no cigars in Heaven, I shall not go."

"If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you; that is the principal difference between a dog and a man."

"Ignorant people think it's the noise which fighting cats make that is so aggravating, but it ain't so; it's the sickening grammar they use."

"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education."

"I'm glad I did it, partly because it was worth it, but mostly because I shall never have to do it again."

"In India, 'cold weather' is merely a conventional phrase and has come into use through the necessity of having some way to distinguish between weather which will melt a brass door-knob and weather which will only make it mushy."

"In the real world, the right thing never happens in the right place and the right time. It is the job of journalists and historians to make it appear that it has."

"It is better to deserve honours and not have them than to have them and not to deserve them."

"It is by the fortune of God that, in this country, we have three benefits: freedom of speech, freedom of thought, and the wisdom never to use either."

"It is not best that we should all think alike; it is differences of opinion that make horse races."

"It usually takes more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech."

"It was enough to make a body ashamed of the human race."

"I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did. I said I didn't know."

"Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great."

"Let us endeavour to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry."

"Let us not be too particular; it is better to have old secondhand diamonds than none at all."

"Loyalty to petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul."

"Man is the only animal that blushes. Or needs to."

"Many a small thing has been made large by the right kind of advertising."

"Modesty died when clothes were born."

"No God and no religion can survive ridicule. No political church, no nobility, no royalty or other fraud, can face ridicule in a fair field, and live."

"Nothing so needs reforming as other people's habits."

"One man alone can be pretty dumb sometimes, but for real bona fide stupidity there ain't nothing can beat teamwork."

"One of the most striking differences between a cat and a lie is that a cat has only nine lives."

"Put all your eggs in the one basket and- watch that basket."

"Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself."

"Soap and education are not as sudden as a massacre, but they are more deadly in the long run."

"Substitute 'damn' every time you're inclined to write 'very'; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be."

"The best way to cheer yourself up is to try to cheer somebody else up."

"The difference between the right word and a similar word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug."

"The fact that man knows right from wrong proves his intellectual superiority to other creatures; but the fact that he can do wrong proves his moral inferiority to any creature that cannot."

"The human race has one really effective weapon, and that is laughter."

"The human race is a race of cowards; and I am not only marching in that procession but carrying a banner."

"The jury system puts a ban upon intelligence and honesty and a premium upon ignorance, stupidity and perjury."

"The man who does not read books has no advantage over the man that can not read them."

"The man who sets out to carry a cat by its tail learns something that will always be useful and which never will grow dim or doubtful."

"The miracle, or the power, that elevates the few is to be found in their industry, application, and perseverance under the prompting of a brave, determined spirit."

"The only way to keep your health is to eat what you don't want, drink what you don't like, and do what you'd rather not."

"The proper office of a friend is to side with you when you are in the wrong. Nearly anybody will side with you when you are in the right."

"The radical of one century is the conservative of the next. The radical invents the views. When he has worn them out, the conservative adopts them."

"The rule is perfect: in all matters of opinion our adversaries are insane."

"The surest protection against temptation is cowardice."

"The very ink with which all history is written is merely fluid prejudice."

"There are three kinds of lies-- lies, damned lies, and statistics." "There is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress."

"There is nothing training cannot do. Nothing is above its reach. It can turn bad morals to good; it can destroy bad principles and recreate good ones; it can lift men to angelship."

"Truth is more of a stranger than fiction."

"Virtue was never as respectable as money. "

"Wagner's music is better than it sounds."

"We are always too busy for our children; we never give them the time or interest they deserve. We lavish gifts upon them; but the most precious gift, our personal association, which means so much to them, we give grudgingly."

"We ought never do wrong when people are looking."

"We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it - and stop there; lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot stove-lid. She will never sit down on a hot stove-lid again, and that is well; but also she will never sit down on a cold one anymore."

"When angry, count to four; when very angry, swear."

"Whenever you find that you are on the side of the majority, it is time to reform."

"When I was younger, I could remember anything, whether it had happened or not; but my faculties are decaying now and soon I shall be so I cannot remember any but the things that never happened. It is sad to go to pieces like this but we all have to do it."

"When in doubt, tell the truth."

"When one has tasted watermelon he knows what the angels eat."

"When people do not respect us we are sharply offended; yet deep down in his private heart no man much respects himself."

"When you cannot get a compliment any other way, pay yourself one."

"Why is it that people rejoice at a birth and grieve at a funeral? It is because we are not the people involved."

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