I am only human, although I regret it.

I’ve never wished a man dead, but I have read some obituaries with great pleasure.

The wise thing is for us diligently to train ourselves to lie thoughtfully, judiciously; to lie with a good object, and not an evil one; to lie for others’ advantage, and not our own; to...

Everytime I read ‘Pride and Prejudice’ I want to dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone.

An honest politician is an oxymoron.

Never have a battle of wits with an unarmed person.

The easy confidence with which I know another man’s religion is folly teaches me to suspect that my own is also.

I take my only exercise acting as a pallbearer at the funerals of my friends who exercise regularly.

To believe yourself brave is to be brave; it is the one only essential thing.

Which is him?” The grammar was faulty, maybe, but we could not know, then, that it would go in a book someday.

Conservatism is the blind and fear-filled worship of dead radicals.

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...

When we set about accounting for a Napoleon or a Shakespeare or a Raphael or a Wagner or an Edison or other extraordinary person, we understand that the measure of his talent will not explain...

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

The Indian may seem poor to we rich Westerners but in matters of the spirit it is we who are the paupers and they who are millionaires.

Ignorant people think it is the noise which fighting cats make that is so aggravating, but it ain’t so; it is the sickening grammar that they use.

I had to have company — I was made for it, I think — so I made friends with the animals. They are just charming, and they have the kindest disposition and the politest ways;...

Did you think you had educated the superstition out of those people?”I certainly did think it.”Well, then, you may unthink it.

After a long time and many questions, Satan said, “The spider kills the fly, and eats it; the bird kills the spider and eats it; the wildcat kills the goose; the — well, they all...

We had a little slave boy whom we had hired from some one, there in Hannibal. He was from the Eastern Shore of Maryland, and had been brought away from his family and his friends,...

In the first place God made idiots. This was for practice. Then he made school boards.

Any emotion, if it is sincere, is involuntary.

I lost Susy thirteen years ago; I lost her mother–her incomparable mother!–five and a half years ago; Clara has gone away to live in Europe and now I have lost Jean. How poor I am,...

In religion and politics people’s beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination, from authorities who have not themselves examined the questions at issue but have taken them at...

It’s lovely to live on a raft. We had the sky up there, all speckled with stars, and we used to lay on our backs and look up at them, and discuss about whether they...

Now, then, that is the tale. Some of it is true.

He done his level best.Was he a mining on the flat..He done it with a zest..Was he a leading of the choir..He done his level best.If he’d a reg’lar task to do,He never took no...

Facts are stubborn things, but statistics are more pliable.

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

NOTICEPersons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.BY ORDER...

Never argue with stupid people; they will drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience.

There isn’t a parallel of latitude but thinks it would have been the equator if it had had its rights.

Habit is habit, and not to be flung out of the window by any man, but coaxed down-stairs one step at a time.

After all these years, I see that I was mistaken about Eve in the beginning; it is better to live outside the Garden with her than inside it without her.

Humor is mankind’s greatest blessing.

Herodotus says, “Very few things happen at the right time, and the rest do not happen at all: the conscientious historian will correct these defects.

The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.

I don’t like to commit myself about Heaven and Hell, you see, I have friends in both places.

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.

Comparison is the death of joy.

The gentle reader will never, never know what a consummate ass he can become until he goes abroad. I speak now, of course, in the supposition that the gentle reader has not been abroad, and...

The government is merely a servant―merely a temporary servant; it cannot be its prerogative to determine what is right and what is wrong, and decide who is a patriot and who isn’t. Its function is...

The only way to keep your health is to eat what you don’t want, drink what you don’t like, and do what you’d druther not.

Who knows, he may grow up to be President someday, unless they hang him first!” Aunt Polly about Tom Sawyer

I love to hear myself talk, because I get so much instruction and moral upheaval out of it.

He would be a consul no doubt by and by, at some foreign port, of the language of which he was ignorant; though if ignorance of language were a qualification he might have been a...

I was sorry to have my name mentioned as one of the great authors, because they have a sad habit of dying off. Chaucer is dead, Spencer is dead, so is Milton, so is Shakespeare,...

All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence; then success is sure.

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

Be wise as a serpent and wary as a dove!