Mark Twain

The way it is now, the asylums can hold the sane people, but if we tried to shut up the insane we should run out of building materials.

We all do no end of feeling, and we mistake it for thinking.

I think a compliment ought always to precede a complaint, where one is possible, because it softens resentment and insures for the complaint a courteous and gentle reception.

History has tried hard to teach us that we can't have good government under politicians. Now, to go and stick one at the very head of the government couldn't be wise.

Love your enemy, it will scare the hell out of them.

True irreverence is disrespect for another man's god.

If God had meant for us to be naked, we'd have been born that way.

The silent colossal National Lie that is the support and confederate of all the tyrannies and shams and inequalities and unfairnesses that afflict the peoples — that is the one to throw bricks and sermons at.

A sin takes on a new and real terror when there seems a chance that it is going to be found out.

War talk by men who have been in a war is always interesting; whereas moon talk by a poet who has not been in the moon is likely to be dull.

A conspiracy is nothing but a secret agreement of a number of men for the pursuance of policies which they dare not admit in public

Continuous improvement is better than delayed perfection.

I have achieved my seventy years in the usual way: by sticking strictly to a scheme of life which would kill anybody else... I will offer here, as a sound maxim, this: That we can't reach old age by another man's road.

Pity is for the living, envy is for the dead.

....try the mustard, - a man can't know what turnips are in perfection without mustard.

I have learned that there lies dormant in the souls of all men a penchant for some particular musical instrument an an unsuspected yearning to play on it, which are bound to wake up an demand attention someday. Therefore you who rail at such that disturb your slumbers with unsuccessful and demoralizing attempts to subjugate a guitar, beware! For sooner or later your own time will come.

You can't break a bad habit by throwing it out the window. You've got to walk it slowly down the stairs.

A good memory and a tongue tied in the middle is a combination which gives immortality to conversation.

A monarch, when good, is entitled to the consideration which we accord to a pirate who keeps Sunday School between crimes; when bad, he is entitled to none at all.

A wise man does not waste so good a commodity as lying for naught.

I don't believe there is anything in the whole earth that you can't learn in Berlin except the German language.