Mark Twain

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

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

Everyone is a moon, and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody.

Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little c…

Don't part with your illusions. When they are gone you may still exist, but you have ceased to live.

When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.

Sanity and happiness are an impossible combination.

What would men be without women? Scarce, sir...mighty scarce.

Books are for people who wish they were somewhere else.

Wrinkles should merely indicate where the smiles have been.

Loyalty to country ALWAYS. Loyalty to government, when it deserves it.

Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't.

The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter. 'tis the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.

But who prays for Satan? Who, in eighteen centuries, has had the common humanity to pray for the one sinner that needed it most?

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.

Never allow someone to be your priority while allowing yourself to be their option.

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

God created war so that Americans would learn geography.

I did not attend his funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it.

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

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

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.

In a good bookroom you feel in some mysterious way that you are absorbing the wisdom contained in all the books through your skin, without even opening them.

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.

Never tell the truth to people who are not worthy of it.

A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.

The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.

I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.

Classic' - a book which people praise and don't read.

Never put off till tomorrow what may be done day after tomorrow just as well.

The man who does not read has no advantage over the man who cannot read.

Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to reform (or pause and reflect).

Good friends, good books, and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.

If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything.