“The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.”
— Mark Twain
“The secret to getting ahead is getting started.”
“Never argue with stupid people, they will drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience.”
“Worrying is like paying a debt you don't owe.”
“The man who does not read has no advantage over the man who cannot read.”
“Everyone is a moon, and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody.”
“If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.”
“Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.”
“Never allow someone to be your priority while allowing yourself to be their option.”
“Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.”
“Kindness is a language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see.”
“Reality can be beaten with enough imagination.”
“The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.”
“Sanity and happiness are an impossible combination.”
“Write what you know.”
“Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured.”
“If voting made any difference they wouldn’t let us do it.”
“Go to heaven for the climate and hell for the company.”
“To get the full value of joy you must have someone to divide it with.”
“Never tell the truth to people who are not worthy of it.”
“If you don't read the newspaper, you're uninformed. If you read the newspaper, you're mis-informed.”
“I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.”
“Don’t go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.”
“Books are for people who wish they were somewhere else.”
“I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.”
“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.”
“You can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.”
“Good friends, good books, and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.”
“A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.”
“Name the greatest of all inventors. Accident.”
“A clear conscience is the sure sign of a bad memory.”
“It is better to deserve honors and not have them than to have them and not deserve them.”
“Education: the path from cocky ignorance to miserable uncertainty.”
“I've lived through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened.”
“When you fish for love, bait with your heart, not your brain.”
“God created war so that Americans would learn geography.”
“Write without pay until somebody offers to pay.”
“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.”
“Loyalty to country always. Loyalty to government, when it deserves it.”
“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.”
“Life is short, break the rules, forgive quickly, kiss slowly, love truly, laugh uncontrollably, and never regret anything that made you smile.”
“Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please.”
“Continuous improvement is better than delayed perfection.”
“In a good bookroom you feel in some mysterious way that you are absorbing the wisdom contained in all the books through your skin, without even opening them.”
“Explore. Dream. Discover.”
“Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint.”
“Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.”
“But who prays for Satan? Who, in eighteen centuries, has had the common humanity to pray for the one sinner that needed it most?”
“Education consists mainly of what we have unlearned.”
“If it’s your job to eat a frog, it’s best to do it first thing in the morning. And If it’s your job to eat two frogs, it’s best to eat the biggest one first.”
“Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear.”
“When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.”
“The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex overwhelming tasks into small manageable tasks, and starting on the first one.”
“Giving up smoking is the easiest thing in the world. I know because I've done it thousands of times.”
“It’s better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than open it and remove all doubt.”
“In the first place God made idiots. This was for practice. Then he made school boards.”
“Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.”
“It’s easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.”
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.”
“The best way to cheer yourself up is to try to cheer somebody else up.”
“It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”
“Just because you’re taught that something’s right and everyone believes it’s right, it don’t make it right.”
“The trouble is not in dying for a friend, but in finding a friend worth dying for.”
“History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme.”
“All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence; then success is sure.”
“Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.”
“Never put off till tomorrow what may be done day after tomorrow just as well.”
“They did not know it was impossible so they did it.”
“Do the right thing. It will gratify some people and astonish the rest.”
“The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.”
“The human race has one really effective weapon, and that is laughter.”
“The lack of money is the root of all evil.”
“A man’s character may be learned from the adjectives which he habitually uses in conversation.”
“Any emotion, if it is sincere, is involuntary.”
“Let us live so that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.”
“Of all the animals, man is the only one that is cruel. He is the only one that inflicts pain for the pleasure of doing it.”
“When angry, count four. When very angry, swear.”
“There is nothing so annoying as having two people talking when you’re busy interrupting.”
“Wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been.”
“Life would be infinitely happier if we could only be born at the age of eighty and gradually approach eighteen.”
“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.”
“A gentleman is someone who knows how to play the banjo and doesn’t.”
“Humor is mankind’s greatest blessing.”
“Nature knows no indecencies; man invents them.”
“I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them have never happened.”
“There was never yet an uninteresting life. Such a thing is an impossibility. Inside of the dullest exterior there is a drama, a comedy, and a tragedy.”
“Life does not consist mainly, or even largely, of facts or happenings. It consist mainly of the storm of thoughts that is forever flowing through one’s head.”
“A successful book is not made of what is in it, but what is left out of it.”
“Facts are stubborn things, but statistics are pliable.”
“The man who is a pessimist before 48 knows too much; if he is an optimist after it he knows too little.”
“Suppose you were an idiot, and suppose you were a member of Congress; but I repeat myself.”
“It’s easy to make friends, but hard to get rid of them.”
“It usually takes me two or three days to prepare an impromptu speech.”
“Be respectful to your superiors, if you have any.”
“My books are water; those of the great geniuses is wine. Everybody drinks water.”
“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.”
“Part of the secret of success in life is to eat what you like and let the food fight it out inside.”
“Human beings can be awful cruel to one another.”
“I did not attend his funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it.”
“When I am king they shall not have bread and shelter only, but also teachings out of books, for a full belly is little worth where the mind is starved.”
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