Mark Twain

I deal with temptation by yielding to it.

I could forgive the boy, now, if he'd committed a million sins!

One thing at a time, is my motto - and just play that thing for all it is worth, even if it's only tto pair and a jack.

Praise is well, compliment is well, but affection-that is the last and most precious reward that any man can win, whether by character or achievement.

I never can think of Judas Iscariot without losing my temper. To my mind Judas Iscariot was nothing but a low, mean, premature, Congressman.

It is easy to find fault, if one has that disposition. There was once a man who, not being able to find any other fault with his coal, complained that there were too many prehistoric toads in it.

There is no such thing as a new idea. It is impossible. We simply take a lot of old ideas and put them into a sort of mental kaleidoscope. We give them a turn and they make new and curious combinations. We keep on turning and making new combinations indefinitely; but they are the same old pieces of colored glass that have been in use through all the ages.

Love is madness, if thwarted it develops fast.

Behind every successful man, there is a woman - And behind every unsuccessful man, there are two.

Pessimism is only the name that men of weak nerve give to wisdom.

The human race was always interesting and we know by its past that it will always continue so, monotonously.

Never refuse to do a kindness unless the act would work great injury to yourself, and never refuse to take a drink - under any circumstances.

What is human life? The first third a good time; the rest remembering about it.

Data is like garbage. You'd better know what you are going to do with it before you collect it.

I was warned to stop smoking, which I did, for two or three days, but it was too lonesome, and I have resumed - in a modified way - 4 smokes a day instead of 40. This will have a good effect. On the bank balance.

We need not worry so much about what man descends from; it's what he descends to that shames the human race.

Whatever you have lived, you can write & by hard work & a genuine apprenticeship, you can learn to write well; but what you have not lived you cannot write, you can only pretend to write it.

If you invent two or three people and turn them loose in your manuscript, something is bound to happen to them -- you can't help it; and then it will take you the rest of the book to get them out of the natural consequences of that occurrence, and so first thing you know, there's your book all finished up and never cost you an idea.

Where prejudice exists it always discolors our thoughts.

The New York papers have long known that no large question is ever really settled until I have been consulted.

It is not worth while to try to keep history from repeating itself, for man's character will always make the preventing of the repetitions impossible.