Mark Twain, Собрание сочинений в восьми томах Quotes

An open mind leaves a chance for someone to drop a worthwhile thought in it.

A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.

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.

He who asks is a fool for five minutes, but he who does not ask remains a fool forever.

Most people can't bear to sit in church for an hour on Sundays. How are they supposed to live somewhere very similar to it for eternity?

Wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been.

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.

The best way to cheer yourself up is to try to cheer somebody else up.

The secret of getting ahead is getting started

The dog is a gentleman; I hope to go to his heaven not man's.

If you have no will to change it, you have no right to criticize it.

Education: the path from cocky ignorance to miserable uncertainty.

Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear.

Prohibition only drives drunkenness behind doors and into dark places, and does not cure it or even diminish it.

Those who do not read have no advantage over those who cannot read.

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.

But who prays for Satan? Who, in eighteen centuries, has had the common humanity to pray for the one sinner that needed it most?

Our lives, our liberty, and our property are never in greater danger than when Congress is in session.

I was educated once - it took me years to get over it.

The nation is divided, half patriots and half traitors, and no man can tell which from which.

Do not complain about growing old. It is a privilege denied to many.

Honesty is the best policy - when there is money in it.

Don't dream your life, but live your dream

Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.

Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.

Cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education.

When you fish for love, bait with your heart, not your brain.

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.

Heaven goes by favor. If it went by merit, you would stay out and your dog would go in.

We have the best government that money can buy.

If you tell the truth you do not need a good memory!

The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.

Synergy - the bonus that is achieved when things work together harmoniously.

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.

Too much of anything is bad, but too much good whiskey is barely enough.

Always acknowledge a fault. This will throw those in authority off their guard and give you an opportunity to commit more.

Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't.

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

A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval.

The conviction of the rich that the poor are happier is no more foolish than the conviction of the poor that the rich are.

Giving up smoking is the easiest thing in the world. I know because I've done it thousands of times.

A pessimist is a well-informed optimist.

A man who keeps company with glaciers comes to feel tolerably insignificant by and by.

Sacred cows make the best hamburger.

Names are not always what they seem.

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.

The most interesting information comes from children, for they tell all they know and then stop.

Let us live so that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.

It's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog.