Often it does seem such a pity that Noah and his party did not miss the boat.

Never tell the truth to people who are not worthy of it.

Advertisements contain the only truths to be relied on in a newspaper.

One frequently only finds out how really beautiful a women is, until after considerable acquaintance with her.

The history of our race, and each individual’s experience, are sown thick with evidence that a truth is not hard to kill and that a lie told well is immortal.

It is true, that which I have revealed to you; there is no God, no universe, no human race, no earthly life, no heaven, no hell. It is all a dream–a grotesque and foolish dream. Nothing exists but you. And you are but a thought–a vagrant thought, a useless thought, a homeless thought, wandering forlorn...

It has now been many months, at the present writing, since I have had a nourishing meal, but I shall soon have one—a modest, private affair, all to myself. I have selected a few dishes, and made out a little bill of fare, which will go home in the steamer that precedes me, and be...

One must make allowances for a parental instinct that has been starving for twenty-five or thirty years. It is famished, it is crazed with hunger by that time, and will be entirely satisfied with anything that comes handy; its taste is atrophied, it can’t tell mud cat from shad. A devil born to a young...

The darling mispronunciations of childhood! – dear me, there’s no music that can touch it; and how one grieves when it wastes away and dissolves into correctness, knowing it will never visit his bereaved ear again.

There is no such thing as a new idea. It is impossible. We simply take a lot of old ideas and put them into a sort of mental kaleidoscope. We give them a turn and they make new and curious combinations. We keep on turning and making new combinations indefinitely; but they are the same...

Name the greatest of all inventors. Accident.

Warm summer sun, shine brightly here, Warm Southern wind, blow softly here, Green sod above, lie light, lie light, Good night, dear heart; good night, good night.

There are many humorous things in the world; among them, the white man’s notion that he is less savage than the other savages.

What would men be without women? Scarce, sir…mighty scarce.

Be respectful to your superiors, if you have any.

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.

Wit is the sudden marriage of ideas which before their union were not perceived to have any relation.

Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason.

It was the cool gray dawn, and there was a delicious sense of repose and peace in the deep pervading calm and silence of the woods. Not a leaf stirred; not a sound obtruded upon great Nature’s meditation […] Gradually the cool dim gray of the morning whitened, and as gradually sounds multiplied and life...

It is discouraging to try to penetrate a mind like yours. You ought to get it out and dance on it. That would take some of the rigidity out of it.

I know grammar by ear only, not by note, not by the rules.

Adam is fading out. It is on account of Darwin and that crowd. I can see that he is not going to last much longer. There’s a plenty of signs. He is getting belittled to a germ—a little bit of a speck that you can’t see without a microscope powerful enough to raise a gnat...

We don not think, in the holy places; we think in bed, afterwards, when the glare, and the the noise, and the confusion are gone, and in fancy we revisit alone, the solemn monuments of the past, and summon the phantom pageants of an age that has passed away.

Darwin abolished special creations, contributed the Origin of Species and hitched all life together in one unbroken procession.

Good judgement is the result of experience and experience the result of bad judgement.

Humor is tragedy plus time.

Unconsciously we all have a standard by which we measure other men, and if we examine closely we find that this standard is a very simple one, and is this: we admire them, we envy them, for great qualities we ourselves lack. Hero worship consists in just that. Our heroes are men who do things...

When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained.

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.

Sanity and happiness are an impossible combination.

I said there was nothing so convincing to an Indian as a general massacre. If he could not approve of the massacre, I said the next surest thing for an Indian was soap and education. Soap and education are not as sudden as a massacre, but they are more deadly in the long run; because...

A person who won’t read has no advantage over one who can’t read.

Children have but little charity for each other’s defects.

You can’t depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.

One ought always to lie, when one can do good by it;

You cannot surprise an individual more than twice with the same marvel

A few fly bites cannot stop a spirited horse.

At noon I observed a bevy of nude young native women bathing in the sea, and I went and sat down on there clothes to keep them from being stolen.

Never put off till tomorrow what can be done the day after tomorrow just as well

You can’t trust quotes on this site. They don’t require sources, and many things are misattributed.

When I was younger, I could remember anything, whether it had happened or not; but my faculties are decaying now and soon I shall be so I cannot remember any but the things that never happened. It is sad to go to pieces like this but we all have to do it.

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

The signs of excessive indulgence in this destructive pastime are easily detectable. They are these: A disposition to eat, to drink, to smoke, to meet together convivially, to laugh, to joke, and tell indelicate stories— and mainly, a yearning to paint pictures.

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.

A gentleman is someone who knows how to play the banjo and doesn’t.

The trade of critic, in literature, music, and the drama, is the most degraded of all trades.

Grief can take care of itself, but to get the full value of joy you must have somebody to divide it with.

Experience is an author’s most valuable asset; experience is the thing that puts the muscle and the breath and the warm blood into the book he writes.

Looking’ his last’ upon the scene of his former joys and his later sufferings, and wishing ‘she’ could see him now, abroad on the wild sea, facing peril and death with a dauntless heart, going to his doom with a grim smile on his lips.

That which I have seen, in that one little moment will never go out from my memory, but will abide there; and I shall see it all the days, and dream of it all the nights, till I die. Would God I had been blind!