Customs do not concern themselves with right or wrong or reason. But they have to be obeyed; one reasons all around them until he is tired, but he must not transgress them, it is sternly...

Human nature appears to be just the same, all over the world

October: This is one of the peculiarly dangerous months to speculate in stocks. The others are July, January, September, April, November, May, March, June, December, August and February.

T[he rules of writing] require that the episodes in a tale shall be necessary parts of the tale, and shall help to develop it.

If your mother tells you to do a thing, it is wrong to reply that you won’t. It is better and more becoming to intimate that you will do as she bids you, and then...

and so when I couldn’t stand it no longer, I lit out. I got into my old rags and my sugar-hogshead again, and was free and satisfied.

I have found out that there ain’t no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than to travel with them.

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

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....

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,...

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...

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...

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...

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.

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.

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...

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...

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...

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...

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.

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....

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 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.

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—...

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.