"A banker is a fellow who lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining, but wants it back the minute it begins to rain."
"A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody has read."
"All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence, and then success is sure."
"Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest."
"A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval."
"Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society."
"Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear - not absence of fear."
"Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first."
"Everthing human is pathetic. The secret source of humor itself is not joy but sorrow."
"Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please."
"Grief can take care of itself, but to get the full value of a joy you must have somebody to divide it with."
If you have trouble sleeping, try lying on the end of your bed. With a little luck you'll drop off.
"If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principle difference between a dog and a man."
"I have found out that there ain't no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them, than to travel with them."
"I'm opposed to millionaires, but it would be dangerous to offer me the position."
"In Paris they simply stared when I spoke to them in French; I never did succeed in making those idiots understand their language."
"It is better to deserve honors and not have them than to have them and not deserve them."
"It usually takes more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech."
"Let us so endeavor to live, that when we come to die, even the undertaker will be sorry."
"Lincoln's proclamation . . . not only set the black slaves free, but set the white man free also."
"Man is the only animal that blushes... or needs to."
"Nothing so needs reforming as other peoples' habits."
"The holy passion of Friendship is of so sweet and steady and loyal and enduring a nature that it will last through a whole lifetime, if not asked to lend money."
"The man with a new idea is a Crank until the idea succeeds."
The man who doesn't read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them.
"There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact."
"Thunder is good, thunder is impressive; but it is lightning that does the work."
"To be good is noble; but to show others how to be good is nobler and no trouble."
"Truth is stranger than Fiction, but it is because fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't."
"Truth is more of a stranger than fiction."
"Wagner's music is better than it sounds."
"We've got so much taxation. I don't know of a single foreign product that enters this country untaxed except the answer to prayer."
"What a good thing Adam had. When he said a good thing, he knew nobody had said it before."
When angry, count to four; when very angry, swear.
Dance like no one is watching. Sing like no one is listening. Love like you've never been hurt and live like it's heaven on Earth.
A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way.
As to the adjective, when in doubt, strike it out.
But when the time comes that a man has had his dinner, then the true man comes to the surface.
Drag your thoughts away from your troubles... by the ears, by the heels, or any other way you can manage it
I am pushing sixty. That is enough exercise for me.
"If you can't get a compliment any other way, pay yourself one."
"You can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus."
The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco
Heaven goes by favour, if it went by merit, you would stay out and your dog would go in.
I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened
"When everyone is looking for gold, it's a good time to be in the pick and shovel business."
The dog is a gentleman; I hope to go to his heaven, not man's.
I take my only exercise acting as pallbearer at the funerals of my friends who exercise regularly.
We were surprised how closely the cuckoo imitated the clock-and yet, of
course, it could never have heard a clock.
The only way to keep your health is to eat what you don't want, drink what you don't like, and do what you'd rather not.
-Mark Twain-
The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.
Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond; cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education
Ignorant people think it's the noise which fighting cats make that is so aggravation, but it ain't so; it's the sickening grammar they use.
If animals could speak, the dog would be a blundering outspoken fellow; but the cat would have the rare grace of never saying a word too much.
Substitute "damn" every time you're inclined to write "very;" your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.
"Last week, I stated this woman was the ugliest woman I had ever seen. I have since been visited by her sister and now wish to withdraw that statement."
"Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great ones make you feel that you too, can become great."
The time to begin writing an article is when you have finished it to your satisfaction. By that time you begin to clearly and logically perceive what it is you really want to say.
"Of all God's creatures there is only one that cannot be made the slave of the leash. That one is the cat. If man could be crossed with the cat it would improve man, but it would deteriorate the cat."
We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it - and stop there; lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot stove-lid. She will never sit down on a hot stove-lid again - and that is well; but also she will never sit down on a cold one anymore.
"It will be conceded...that a Christian's first duty is to God. It then follows, as a matter of course, that it is his duty to carry his Christian code of morals to the polls and vote them. Whenever he shall do that, he will not find himself voting for an unclean man, a dishonest man. Whenever a Christian votes, he votes against God or for Him, and he knows this
quite well.
It is my heart-warmed and world-embracing Christmas hope and aspiration that all of us, the high, the low, the rich, the poor, the admired, the despised, the loved, the hated, the civilized, the savage (every man and brother of us all throughout the whole earth), may eventually be gathered together in a heaven of everlasting rest and peace and bliss, except the inventor of the telephone.
The true charm of pedestrianism does not lie in the walking, or in the scenery, but in the talking. The walking is good to time the movement of the tongue by, and to keep the blood and the brain stirred up and active; the scenery and the woodsy smells are good to bear in upon a man an unconscious and unobtrusive charm and solace to eye and soul and sense; but the supreme pleasure comes from the talk.
The proper office of a friend is to side with you when you are in the wrong. Nearly anybody will side with you when you are in the right.
To promise not to do a thing is the surest way in the world to make a body want to go and do that very thing
Adam and Eve had many advantages, but the principal one was that they escaped teething.
It is discouraging to try to penetrate a mind like yours. You ought to get it out and dance on it. That would take some of the rigidity out of it.
Forgiveness is the fragrance the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.
I must have a prodigious quantity of mind; it takes me as much as a week sometimes to make it up.
Nothing seems to please a fly so much as to be taken for a currant; and if it can be baked in a cake and palmed off on the unwary, it dies happy.
There is no sadder sight than a young pessimist.
Habit is habit, and not to be flung out of the window by any man, but coaxed downstairs a step at a time.
I was seldom able to see an opportunity until it had ceased to be one.
Patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels.
Be careless in your dress if you must, but keep a tidy soul.
Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime
When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years.
Education consists mainly of what we have unlearned.
It has always been my rule never to smoke when asleep, and never to refrain when awake.
April 1. This is the day upon which we are reminded of what we are on the other three hundred and sixty-four.
Thanksgiving Day, a function which originated in New England two or three centuries ago when those people recognized that they really had something to be thankful for - annually, not oftener - if they had succeeded in exterminating their neighbors, the Indians, during the previous twelve months instead of getting exterminated by their neighbors, the Indians.
Thanksgiving Day became a habit, for the reason that in the course of time, as the years drifted on, it was perceived that the exterminating had ceased to be mutual and was all on the white man's side, consequently on the Lord's side; hence it was proper to thank the Lord for it and extend the usual annual compliments.
There are many humorous things in the world, among them the white man's notion that he is less savage than the other savages.
It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare.
In the beginning of a change, the patriot is a scarce man, and brave, and hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a patriot.
My kind of loyalty was loyalty to one's country, not to its institutions or its office-holders.
Each man must for himself alone decide what is right and what is wrong, which course is patriotic and which isn't. You cannot shirk this and be a man. To decide against your conviction is to be an unqualified and excusable traitor, both to yourself and to your country, let men label you as they may.
In my age, as in my youth, night brings me many a deep remorse. I realize that from the cradle up I have been like the rest of the race never quite sane in the night.
There is a charm about the forbidden that makes it unspeakably desirable.
If you tell the truth you don't have to remember anything.
Truth is the most valuable thing we have, so I try to conserve it.
Truth is mighty and will prevail. There is nothing the matter with this, except that it ain't so.
Often, the surest way to convey information is to tell the strict truth.
A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.
One of the most striking differences between a cat and a lie is that a cat has only nine lives.
I am different from Washington; I have a higher, grander standard of
principle. Washington could not lie. I can lie, but I won't.
Everyone is a moon, and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody.
In certain trying circumstances, urgent circumstances, desperate circumstances, profanity furnishes a relief denied even to prayer.
The existing phrasebooks are inadequate. They are well enough as far as they go, but when you fall down and skin your leg they don't tell you what to say.
In the real world, the right thing never happens in the right place and the right time. It is the job of journalists and historians to make it appear that it has.
Get a bicycle. You will not regret it if you live.
It is my belief that nearly any invented quotation, played with confidence, stands a good chance to deceive.
What are the proper proportions of a maxim? A minimum of sound to a maximum of sense.
There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.
Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see.
If we should deal out justice only, in this world, who would escape? No, it is better to be generous, and in the end more profitable, for it gains gratitude for us, and love.
I shall never use profanity except in discussing house rent and taxes.
Thousands of geniuses live and die undiscovered - either by themselves or by others.
Such is the human race, often it seems a pity that Noah... didn't miss the boat.
The human race is a race of cowards; and I am not only marching in that
procession but carrying a banner.
Man - a creature made at the end of the week's work when God was tired.
Man will do many things to get himself loved; he will do all things to get
himself envied.
We could use up two Eternities in learning all that is to be learned about our own world and the thousands of nations that have arisen and flourished and vanished from it. Mathematics alone would occupy me eight million years.
But who prays for Satan? Who, in eighteen centuries, has had the common humanity to pray for the one sinner that needed it most?
Biographies are but the clothes and buttons of the man - the biography of the man himself cannot be written.
I am opposed to millionaires, but it would be dangerous to offer me the position.
October: This is one of the peculiarly dangerous months to speculate in stocks in. The others are July, January, September, April, November, May, March, June, December, August and February.
A dollar picked up in the road is more satisfaction to us than the 99 which we had to work for, and the money won at Faro or in the stock market snuggles into our hearts in the same way.
The first half of life consists of the capacity to enjoy without the chance; the last half consists of the chance without the capacity.
Life would be infinitely happier if we could only be born at the age of eighty and gradually approach eighteen.
I can teach anybody how to get what they want out of life. The problem is that I can't find anybody who can tell me what they want.
But that's always the way; it don't make no difference whether you do right or wrong, a person's conscience ain't got no sense, and just goes for him anyway. If I had a yaller dog that didn't know no more than a person's conscience does I would pison him. It takes up more room than all the rest of a person's insides, and yet ain't no good, nohow.
A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval.
If the desire to kill and the opportunity to kill came always together, who would escape hanging?
Man is the Only Animal that Blushes. Or needs to.
Principles have no real force except when one is well-fed.
Each man must for himself alone decide what is right and what is wrong, which course is patriotic and which isn't. You cannot shirk this and be a
man. To decide against your conviction is to be an unqualified and excusable traitor, both to yourself and to your country, let me label you
as they may.
It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare.
The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them.
Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.
All religions issue bibles against him, and say most injurious things about him, but we never hear his side. (about the Devil)
Thunder is good, thunder is impressive; but it is the lightning that does the work.
Golf is a good walk spoiled.
It's good sportsmanship not to pick up lost balls while they are still rolling.
Love seems the swiftest but it is the slowest of all growths. No man or woman really knows what perfect love is until they have been married a
quarter of a century.
The very ink with which all history is written is merely fluid prejudice.
Mark Twain first learned to ride a bicycle at age 55.
"Sacred cows make the best hamburgers."
"Nature knows no indecencies; man invents them."
Wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been
"Courage is not the absence of fear but the mastery of it."
I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.
"Suppose you were an idiot... And suppose you were a member of Congress... But I repeat myself."
God has put something nobel and good into every heart which His hand created.
Happiness is a Swedish sunset; it is there for all, but most of us look the other way and lose it.
It is not best that we should all think alike; it is difference of opinion that make horseraces.
I can always tell which is the front end of a horse, but beyond that, my art is not above the ordinary.
We can secure other people's approval, if we do it right and try hard; but our own is worth a hundred of it.
It is just like man's vanity and impertinence to call an animal dumb because it is dumb to his dull perceptions.
"A home without a cat, and a well-fed, well-petted and properly revered cat, may be a perfect home, perhaps; but how can it prove its title?"
"If you shamefully misuse a cat once she will always maintain a dignified reserve toward you afterward. You will never get her full confidence again."
The fact that man knows right from wrong proves his intellectual superiority to the other creatures; but the fact that he can do wrong proves his moral inferiority to any creatures that cannot.
"Every time you stop a school, you will have to build a jail. What you gain at one end you lose at the other. It's like feeding a dog on his own tail. It won't fatten the dog."
"The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex overwhelming tasks into small manageable tasks,
and then starting on the first one."
I have been studying the traits and dispositions of the "lower animals" (so called) and contrasting them with the traits and dispositions of man. I find the result humiliating to me.
The worst loneliness is not to be comfortable with yourself.
When I was younger, I could remember anything, whether it had happened or not; but my faculties are decaying now and soon I shall be so I cannot remember any but the things that never happened. It is sad to go to pieces like this but we all have to do it.
I am not interested to know whether vivisection produces results that are profitable to the human race or doesn't.... The pain which it inflicts upon unconsenting animals is the basis of my enmity toward it, and it is to me sufficient justification of the enmity without looking further.
... the silent city was flooded with the
mellowest light that ever streamed from the moon, and seemed like some living creature wrapped in peaceful slumber.
"By what right has the dog come to be regarded as a "noble" animal? The more brutal and cruel and unjust you are to him the more your fawning and adoring slave he becomes; whereas, if you shamefully misuse a cat once she will always maintain a dignified reserve toward you afterward- you will never get her full confidence again."
Of all the creatures, man is the most detestable. Of the entire brood, he is the only one that possesses malice. He is the only creature that inflicts pain for sport, knowing it to be pain. The fact that man knows right from wrong proves his intellectual superiority to the other creatures; but the fact that he can do wrong proves his moral inferiority to any creature that cannot.
"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed
by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you
did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the
safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails.
Explore. Dream. Discover."
To me, old age is always fifteen years older than I am.
The follies which a man regrets most in his life are those which he didn't commit when he had the opportunity.
Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't
do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bow-lines. Sail away from
the safe harbour. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream.
Discover.
Whenever self-doubt creeps in, quickly replace your thoughts with a good image of yourself and your actions. "Drag your thought away from your troubles . . . by the ears, by the heels or any other way you can manage it. It's the healthiest thing a body can do."
