Mark Twain

All say, ‘how hard it is that we have to die’ -- a strange complaint to come from the mouths of those who have had to live.

Conservatism is the blind and fear-filled worship of dead radicals.

There are three infallible ways of pleasing an author, and the three form a rising scale of compliment: 1, to tell him you have read one of his books; 2, to tell him you have read all of his books; 3, to ask him to let you read the manuscript of his forthcoming book. No. 1 admits you to his respect; No. 2 admits you to his admiration; No. 3 carries you clear into his heart.

Sometimes you gwyne to git hurt, en sometimes you gwyne to git sick; but every time you's gwyne to git well agin.

You cant reach old age by another man's road, my habits protect my life but they would assassinate you

Man never creates, he only recombines the lines and colors of his own existance.

Drawing on my fine command of language, I said nothing.

It’s not the good that die young, it’s the lucky.

It is a time when one’s spirit is subdued and sad, one knows not why; when the past seems a storm-swept desolation, life a vanity and a burden, and the future but a way to death. It is a time when one is filled with vague longings; when one dreams of flight to peaceful islands in the remote solitudes of the sea, or folds his hands and says, What is the use of struggling, and toiling and worrying any more? let us give it all up.

If you must be indiscrete, be discrete in your indiscretion.

There is nothing so annoying as to have two people talking when you're busy interrupting.

To do good is noble. To tell others to do good is even nobler and much less trouble.

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

When the Lord finished the world, he pronounced it good. That is what I said about my first work, too. But Time, I tell you, Time takes the confidence out of these incautious opinions. It is more than likely that He thinks about the world, now, pretty much as I think about the Innocents Abroad. The fact is, there is a trifle too much water in both.

I like Joan of Arc best of all my books; and it is the best; I know it perfectly well.

Good judgement is the result of experience and experience the result of bad judgement.

Anyone who can only think of one way to spell a word obviously lacks imagination.

Let us consider that we are all partially insane. It will explain us to each other; it will unriddle many riddles; it will make clear and simple many things which are involved in haunting and harassing difficulties and obscurities now.

I couldn't bear to think about it; and yet, somehow, I couldn't think about nothing else.

Every person is a book, each year a chapter.

Once you've put one of his [Henry James] books down, you simply can't pick it up again.