Quotes from Mark Twain

I conceive that the right way to write a story for boys is to write so that it will not only interest boys but strongly interest any man who has ever been a boy. That immensely enlarges the audience.

When I was younger, I could remember anything, whether it had happened or not.

A little thing that don't cost nothing, and it's just the little things that makes a man to be looked up to and liked.

Think of that — what little things change the world's history...

Age 50. — At 50 a man can be an ass without being an optimist but not an optimist without being an ass.

Yes, Agassiz does recommend authors to eat fish, because the phosphorus in it makes brain. So far you are correct. But I cannot help you to a decision about the amount you need to eat — at least not with certainty. If the specimen composition you send is about your fair usual average, I suggest that perhaps a couple of whales would be all you would want for the present. Not the largest kind, but simply good middling-sized whales.

The statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting the blame upon the nation that is being attacked, and every man will be glad of these conscience-soothing falsities

An inglorious peace is better than a dishonorable war.

Man is the only animal that is cruel. It kills just for the sake of it.

Love seems the swiftest, but it is the slowest of growths

Adam was not alone in the Garden of Eden, however, and does not deserve all the credit; much is due to Eve, the first woman, and Satan, the first consultant.

He gossips habitually; he lacks the common wisdom to keep still that deadly enemy of man, his own tongue.

It is not best that we should all think alike; it is a difference of opinion that makes horse races.

Every man is a moon; he has a side no one sees.

What a good thing Adam had. When he said a good thing he knew nobody had said it before.

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.

The perfection of wisdom, and the end of true philosophy is to proportion our wants to our possessions, our ambitions to our capacities, we will then be a happy and a virtuous people.

Laughter without a tinge of philosophy is but a sneeze of humor. Genuine humor is replete with wisdom.

And I urge upon you this - which I think is wisdom - if you find you can't make seventy by any but an uncomfortable road, don't you go.

Wisdom teaches us that none but birds should go out early, and that not even birds should do it unless they are out of worms.

We chase phantoms half the days of our lives. It is well if we learn wisdom even then, and save the other half.

My own luck has been curious all my literary life; I never could tell a lie that anyone would doubt, nor a truth that anybody would believe.

Indeed, none but the Deity can tell what is good luck and what is bad before the returns are all in.

Name the greatest of all inventors: Accident.