Mark Twain
Whenever we come upon one of those intensely right words in a book or a newspaper the resulting effect is physical as well as spiritual, and electrically prompt.Collection: Spiritual
Diligence is a good thing, but taking things easy is much more restful.Collection: Humor
We can secure other people's approval, if we do right and try hard; but our own is worth a hundred of it, and no way has been found out of securing that.Collection: Carpe Diem
I was born modest; not all over, but in spots.Collection: Born
Every man is a moon and has a side which he turns toward nobody: you have to slip around behind it if you want to see it.Collection: Moon
When someone dies, it is like when your house burns down; it isn't for years that you realize the full extent of your loss.Collection: Grief
Don't live in the past, don't ponder about the future, stay at the PRESENT moment NOW...always.Collection: Past
There is nothing like instances to grow hair on a bald-headed argument.Collection: Hair
All schools, all colleges, have two great functions: to confer, and to conceal, valuable knowledge. The theological knowledge which they conceal cannot justly be regarded as less valuable than that which they reveal. That is, when a man is buying a basket of strawberries it can profit him to know that the bottom half of it is rotten.Collection: Religious
Each of you, for himself, by himself and on his own responsibility, must speak.Collection: Responsibility
Our opinions do not really blossom into fruition until we have expressed them to someone else.Collection: Fruition
And what is a man without energy? Nothing - nothing at all.Collection: Inspirational
Peace by persuasion has a pleasant sound, but I think we should not be able to work it. We should have to tame the human race first, and history seems to show that that cannot be done.Collection: Peace
It will take mind and memory months and possibly years to gather together the details, and thus learn and know the whole extent of the loss.Collection: Memories
We have a criminal jury system which is superior to any in the world and it's efficiency is only marred by the difficulty of finding twelve men every day who don't know anything and can't read-Collection: Funny
I never can think of Judas Iscariot without losing my temper. To my mind Judas Iscariot was nothing but a low, mean, premature, Congressman.Collection: Mean
Experience, the only logic sure to convince a diseased imagination and restore it to rugged health.Collection: Health
Time cools, time clarifies; no mood can be maintained quite unaltered through the course of hours. When you make a decision to "be" a particular way, you can count on change and external circumstances to come along which will challenge that decision. Remain vigilant after declaring a major decision and manage yourself in relationship to the goal. Set up structures that support you staying on target.Collection: Inspirational Life
The art of prophecy is very difficult, especially with respect to the future.Collection: Art
...heaven for climate, and hell for society.Collection: Heaven
Rags, wretchedness, poverty and dirt, those signs and symbols that indicate the presence of [Muslim] rule more surely than the crescent-flag itself, abound.Collection: Flags
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. Once you are crystal clear about the intended end result that you seek to produce, all the ways that it can become a done deal start to reveal themselves to you. There are many who have accomplished exactly what you want to achieve and could show you the way. You are not ready to ask them because you are not clear and you have not determined which questions need answers.Collection: Inspirational Life
And how moving is the eloquence of the untaught when it is the heart that is speaking!Collection: Moving
As a rule, we go about with masks, we go about looking honest, and we are able to conceal ourselves all through the day.Collection: Honesty
Frankness is a jewel; only the young can afford it.Collection: Jewels
Warm summer sun, shine kindly here. Warm southern wind, blow softly here. Green sod above, lie light, lie light. Good night, dear Heart, Good night, good night.Collection: Romantic
Fortune knocks at every man's door once in a life.Collection: Opportunity
Weather is a literary specialty, and no untrained hand can turn out a good article on itCollection: Weather
Such is professional jealousy; a scientist will never show any kindness for a theory which he did not start himself.Collection: Kindness
That is the way of the scientist. He will spend thirty years in building up a mountain range of facts with the intent to prove a certain theory; then he is so happy with his achievement that as a rule he overlooks the main chief fact of all-that all his accumulation proves an entirely different thing.Collection: Science
I never could do anything with figures, never had any talent for mathematics, never accomplished anything in my efforts at that rugged study, and to-day the only mathematics I know is multiplication, and the minute I get away up in that, as soon as I reach nine times seven- [He lapsed into deep thought, trying to figure nine times seven. Mr. McKelway whispered the answer to him.] I've got it now. It's eighty-four. Well, I can get that far all right with a little hesitation. After that I am uncertain, and I can't manage a statistic.Collection: Science
When one reads Bibles, one is less surprised at what the Deity knows than at what He doesn't know.Collection: Religion
In God We Trust. It is the choicest compliment that has ever been paid us, and the most gratifying to our feelings. It is simple, direct, gracefully phrased; it always sounds well - In God We Trust. I don't believe it would sound any better if it were true.Collection: Believe
Well - Patriotism has its laws. And it also is a perfectly definite one, there are not vaguenesses about it. It commands that the brother over the border shall be sharply watched and brought to book every time he does us a hurt or offends us with an insult.Collection: Hurt
As I have said before, I never had any large respect for good spelling. That is my feeling yet. Before the spelling-book came with its arbitrary forms, men unconsciously revealed shades of their characters, and also added enlightening shades of expression to what they wrote by their spelling, and so it is possible that the spelling-book has been a doubtful benevolence to us.Collection: Respect
We may not doubt that society in heaven consists mainly of undesirable persons.Collection: Heaven
It's my opinion that every one I know has morals, though I wouldn't like to ask. I know I have. But I'd rather teach them than practice them any day. "Give them to others"-that's my motto.Collection: Practice
We get our morals from books. I didn't get mine from books, but I know that morals do come from books- theoretically at least.Collection: Book
As by the fires of experience, so by commission of crime you learn real morals. Commit all crimes, familiarize yourself with all sins, take them in rotation (there are only two or three thousand of them), stick to it, commit two or three every day, and by and by you will be proof against them. When you are through you will be proof against all sins and morally perfect. You will be vaccinated against every possible commission of them. This is the only way.Collection: Real
...mastery of the art and spirit of the Germanic language enables a man to travel all day in one sentence without changing cars.Collection: Art
It is easier for a cannibal to enter the Kingdom of Heaven through the eye of a rich man's needle that it is for any other foreigner to read the terrible German script.Collection: Eye
...the circumstances and the atmosphere always have so much to do in directing a conversation, especially a German conversation, which is only a kind of an insurrection, anyway.Collection: Atmosphere
It's awful undermining to the intellect, German is; you want to take it in small doses, or first you know your brains all run together, and you feel them flapping around in your head same as so much drawn butter.Collection: Running
I would not rob you of your food or your clothes or your umbrella, but if I caught your German out I would take it. But I don't study any more,- I have given it up.Collection: Clothes
I can understand German as well as the maniac that invented it, but I talk it best through an interpreter.Collection: Language
It is not like studying German, where you mull along, in a groping, uncertain way, for thirty years; and at last, just as you think you've got it, they spring the subjunctive on you, and there you are. No- and I see now plainly enough, that the great pity about the German language is, that you can't fall off it and hurt yourself. There is nothing like that feature to make you attend strictly to business.Collection: Hurt
But we are all insane, anyway. Note the mountain-climbers.Collection: Insanity
It is my custom to keep on talking until I get the audience cowed.Collection: Talking
Annihilation has no terrors for me, because I have already tried it before I was born --a hundred million years --and I have suffered more in an hour, in this life, than I remember to have suffered in the whole hundred million years put together.Collection: Years