Mark Twain

Irrevence is another person's disrespect to your god; there isn't any word that tells what your disrespect to his god is.

You take the lies out of him, and he'll shrink to the size of your hat; you take the malice out of him, and he'll disappear.

In the real world, nothing happens at the right place at the right time. It is the job of journalists and historians to correct that.

To say a compliment well is a high art and few possess it.

We despise no source that can pay us a pleasing attention.

In statesmanship get formalities right, never mind about the moralities.

The moral sense enables one to perceive morality, and avoid it. The immoral sense enables one to perceive immorality and enjoy it.

Gratitude is a debt which usually goes on accumulating like blackmail; the more you pay, the more is exacted.

Custom is petrification, nothing but dynamite can dislodge it for a century.

Have a place for everything and keep the thing somewhere else. This is not advice, it is merely custom.

Modesty died when clothes were born.

Chastity - you can carry it too far.

A friend is someone who stays in when the rest of the world has gone out.

The vast majority of the race whether savage or civilized, are secretly kind at heart and shrink from inflicting pain, but in the presence of the aggressive and pitiless minority they don't dare to assert themselves.

It is best to read the weather forecast before praying for rain.

It is strange the way the ignorant and inexperienced so often and so undeservedly succeed when the informed and the experienced fail.

Nothing incites to money-crimes like great poverty or great wealth.

The world doesn't owe you anything. It was here first.

A new oath holds pretty well; but... when it is become old, and frayed out, and damaged by a dozen annual retryings of its remains, it ceases to be serviceable; any little strain will snap it.

I would rather have my ignorance than another man's knowledge, because I have so much of it.

Man is the only animal that is cruel. It kills just for the sake of it.