Go to Hang'm or Save'm.
As Mark Twain (1835-1910) said....
A classic: something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.
Adam was but human--this explains it all. He did not want the apple for the apple's sake, he wanted it only because it was forbidden. The mistake was in not forbidding the serpent: then he would have eaten the serpent.
All say, 'how hard it is that we have to die'--a strange complaint to come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
All you need is ignorance and confidence; then success is sure.
A man is accepted into church for what he believes—and turned out for what he knows.
Behold the fool saith, 'put not all thine eggs in one basket'--which is but a manner of saying, 'scatter your money and your attention'; but the wise man saith, 'put all your eggs in the one basket and--WATCH THAT BASKET.'
By trying we can easily learn to endure adversity. Another man's, I mean.
Civilization is a limitless multiplication of unnecessary necessities.
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.
Faith is believing what you know ain't so.
Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example.
Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please.
Good breeding consists in concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of the other person.
Grief can take care of itself, but to get the full value of a joy you must have somebody to divide it with.
I have no color prejudices nor caste prejudices nor creed prejudices. All I care to know is that a man is a human being, and that is enough for me; he can't be any worse.
I think a compliment ought always to precede a complaint, where one is possible, because it softens resentment and insures for the complaint a courteous and gentle reception.
I thoroughly disapprove of duels. I consider them unwise and I know they are dangerous. Also, sinful. If a man should challenge me now I would go to that man and take him kindly and forgivingly by the hand and lead him to a quiet retired spot and kill him.
If you invent two or three people and turn them loose in your manuscript, something is bound to happen to them -- you can't help it; and then it will take you the rest of the book to get them out of the natural consequences of that occurrence, and so first thing you know, there's your book all finished up and never cost you an idea.
In religion and politics people's beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination.
India has 2,000,000 gods, and worships them all. In religion other countries are paupers; India is the only millionaire.
It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress.
It is agreed, in this country, that if a man can arrange his religion so that it perfectly satisfies his conscience, it is not incumbent on him to care whether the arrangement is satisfactory to anyone else or not.
It is best to read the weather forecast before praying for rain.
It is better to deserve honors and not have them than to have them and not deserve them.
It is better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than to open it and remove all doubt.
It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them.
It is noble to be good; it is still nobler to teach others to be good -- and less trouble.
It is not worth while to try to keep history from repeating itself, for man's character will always make the preventing of the repetitions impossible.
It takes your enemy and your friend, working together, to hurt you to the heart: the one to slander you and the other to get the news to you.
July 4: statistics show that we lose more fools on this day than all the other days of the year put together. This proves, by the number left in stock, that one Fourth of July per year is now inadequate, the country has grown so.
Let us be thankful for the fools. But for them the rest of us could not succeed.
Let your secret sympathies and your compassion be always with the under dog in the fight -- this is magnanimity; but bet on the other one -- this is business.
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 is the only animal that blushes. Or needs to.
Man is the religious animal. He is the only religious animal. He is the only animal that has the True Religion: several of them.
Man is without doubt the most interesting fool there is. He concedes that God made the angels immune from pain and death, and that he could have been similarly kind to man, but denies that he was under any moral obligation to do so.
Man will do many things to get himself loved, he will do all things to get himself envied.
Martyrdom covers a multitude of sins.
My books are water; those of the great geniuses is wine. Everybody drinks water.
Nothing that grieves us can be called little: by the eternal laws of proportion a child's loss of a doll and a king's loss of a crown are events of the same size.
Observe the ass, for instance: his character is about perfect, he is the choicest spirit among all the humbler animals, yet see what ridicule has brought him to. Instead of feeling complimented when we are called an ass we are left in doubt.
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.
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.
Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.
Suppose you were an idiot and suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.
The Bible tells us to love our neighbors and also to love our enemies; probably because they are generally the same people.
The difference between the right word and the almost-right word is the difference between the lightning and the lightning-bug,
[The Bible] has noble poetry in it... and some good morals and a wealth of obscenity, and upwards of a thousand lies.
The Book of Mormon: Chloroform in print.
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 who is a pessimist before 48 knows too much; if he is an optimist after it, he knows too little.
The man with a new idea is a crank until the idea succeeds.
The New York papers have long known that no large question is ever really settled until I have been consulted.
The political and commercial morals of the United States are not merely food for laughter, they are an entire banquet.
The radical invents the views. When he has worn them out the conservative adopts them.
The very ink in which history is written is merely fluid prejudice.
There are lies, damn lies, and statistics.
There are several good precautions against temptation, but the surest is cowardice.
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.
There is no character, howsoever good and fine, but it can be destroyed by ridicule, howsoever poor and witless.
There is no sadder sight than a young pessimist, except an old optimist.
There is nothing you can say in answer to a compliment. I have been complimented myself a great many times, and they always embarrass me--I always feel that they have not said enough.
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.
To arrive at a just estimate of a renowned man's character one must judge it by the standards of his time, not ours.
True irreverence is disrespect for another man's god.
Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did. So throw off the bowlines, Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream.
War talk by men who have been in a war is always interesting; whereas moon talk by a poet who has not been in the moon is likely to be dull.
We all do no end of feeling, and we mistake it for thinking.
We are discreet sheep; we wait to see how the drove is going, and then go with the drove.
What, then, is the true Gospel of consistency? Change. Who is the really consistent man? The man who changes. Since change is the law of his being, he cannot be consistent if he stick in a rut.
When angry, count four; when very angry, swear.
When in doubt, tell the truth.
Whenever you find you are on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.
Where prejudice exists it always discolors our thoughts.
Whoever has lived long enough to find out what life is, knows how deep a debt of gratitude we owe to Adam, the first great benefactor of our race. He brought death into the world.
Why is it that we rejoice at a birth and grieve at a funeral? Is it because we are not the person involved.
Wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been.