Mark Twain

Always do right. That will gratify some people and astonish the rest.

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.

Every one is a moon, and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody.

Grief can take care of itself, but to get the full value of a joy you must have somebody to divide it with.

It is the Christian congregations that are responsible for the filling of our public offices with criminals, for the reason that they could prevent it if they chose to do it. They could prevent it without organizing a league, without framing a platform, without making any speeches or passing any resolutions -- in a word, without concert of any kind. They could accomplish it by each individual resolving to vote for God at the polls -- that is to say, vote for the candidate whom God would approve.

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.

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.

Man will do many things to get himself loved; he will do all things to get himself envied.

Power, money, persuasion, supplication, persecution -- these can lift at a colossal humbug -- push it a little -- weaken it a little over the course of a century; but only laughter can blow it to rags and atoms at a blast. Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand.

There are a thousand excuses for every failure but never a good reason.

There comes a time in every rightly constructed boy's life that he has a raging desire to go somewhere and dig for hidden treasure.