Mark Twain

Few of us can stand prosperity—another man's I mean.

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

You can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.

Let us consider that we are all partially insane. It will explain us to each other; it will unriddle many riddles; it will make clear and simple many things which are involved in haunting and harassing difficulties and obscurities now.

There are people who strictly deprive themselves of each and every eatable, drinkable, and smokable which has in any way acquired a shady reputation. They pay this price for health. And health is all they get for it. How strange it is. It is like paying out your whole fortune for a cow that has gone dry.

An awkward, feeble, leaky lie is a thing which you ought to make it your unceasing study to avoid; such a lie as that has no more real permanence than an average truth.

Man was made at the end of the week's work, when God was tired.

I felt so lonesome I most wished I was dead. The stars were shining, and the leaves rustled in the woods ever so mournful; and I heard an owl, away off, who-whooing about somebody that was dead, and a whippowill and a dog crying about somebody that was going to die;

Before taking final leave of me, my instructor inquired concerning my physical strength, and I was able to inform him that I hadn't any.

Man, “know thyself'— then thou wilt despise thyself to a dead moral certainty.

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

I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them have never happened.

There are no people who are quite so vulgar as the over-refined ones.

There is only one good sex. The female one.

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