Mark Twain

There is nothing more awe-inspiring than a miracle except the credulity that can take it at par.

The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.

Humor is mankind's greatest blessing.

Drag your thoughts away from your troubles... by the ears, by the heels, or any other way you can manage it.

We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it - and stop there.

Do not complain about growing old. It is a privilege denied to many.

It has been said that a Scotchman has not seen the world until he has seen Edinburgh; and I think that I may say that an American has not seen the United States until he has seen Mardi Gras in New Orleans.

How lucky Adam was. He knew when he said a good thing, nobody had said it before.

That is a society editor, sitting there elegantly dressed, with his legs crossed in that indolent way, observing the clothes the ladies wear, so that he can describe them for his paper and make them out finer than they are and get bribes for it and become wealthy.

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

Don't use a five-dollar word when a fifty-cent word will do.

A little lie can travel half way 'round the world while Truth is still lacing up her boots.

Man has imagined a heaven, and has left entirely out of it the supremest of all his delights...sexual intercourse!...His heaven is like himself: strange, interesting, astonishing, grotesque. I give you my word, it has not a single feature in it that he actually values.

I don't speak German well but several experts have assured me that I write it like an angel. Maybe so, maybe so- I don't know. I've not yet made any acquaintances among the angels. That comes later, whenever it please the Deity. I'm not in any hurry.

When I was fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have him around. When I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years. See what happens when you "know it all", at any stage of life? Farther down the track you may see clearly how certain personal opinions, held onto too tightly, could be fogging up the view, and providing incorrect insight. Prosperity is the best protector of principle.

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

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

Man is a marvelous curiosity...he thinks he is the Creator's pet...he even believes the Creator loves him; has passion for him; sits up nights to admire him; yes and watch over him and keep him out of trouble. He prays to him and thinks he listens. Isn't it a quaint idea.

Men are more compassionate/(nobler)/magnanimous/generous than God; for men forgive their dead, but God does not.

When majority is insane, sane must go to asylum.

I will now claim - until dispossesed - that I was the first person in the world to apply the typewriter to literature. ... The early machine was full of caprices, full of defects- devilish ones. It had as many immoralities as the machine of today has virtues. After a year or two I found that it was degrading my character, so I thought I would give it to Howells. ... He took it home to Boston, and my morals began to improve, but his have never recovered.