To get the right word in the right place is a rare achievement. To condense the diffused light of a page of thought into the luminous flash of a single sentence, is worthy to rank...

Thanksgiving Day, a function which originated in New England two or three centuries ago when those people recognized that they really had something to be thankful for — annually, not oftener — if they had...

The more I learn about people, the more I like my dog.

The boys were amazed that I could make such a poem as that out of my own head, and so was I, of course, it being as much a surprise to me as it could...

This explains why, whenever a person says sie to me, I generally try to kill him, if a stranger.

Tout les jours you are coming some fresh game or other on me, mais vous ne pouvez pas play this savon dodge on me twice!

A person that started in to carry a cat home by the tail was gitting knowledge that was always going to be useful to him, and warn’t ever going to grow dim or doubtful.

Everybody granted that if “Tom” were white and free it would be unquestionably right to punish him–it would be no loss to anybody; but to shut up a valuable slave for life–that was quite another...

To me [Edgar Allen Poe’s] prose is unreadable—like Jane Austin’s [sic]. No there is a difference. I could read his prose on salary, but not Jane’s. Jane is entirely impossible. It seems a great pity...

The human race has only one really effective weapon and that is laughter.

Drag your thoughts awayfrom your troubles…by the ears, by the heels,or any other way you can manage it.

Eat a live frog first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day.

It’s not the size of the dog in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the dog.

Man is the Reasoning Animal. Such is the claim. I think it is open to dispute. Indeed, my experiments have proven to me that he is the Unreasoning Animal… In truth, man is incurably foolish....

Sing like no one is listening, love like you’ve never been hurt, dance like nobody is watching, and live like it’s heaven on earth.

The difference between nonfiction and fiction is that fiction must be absolutely believable.

It’s better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than open it and remove all doubt

A half-truth is the most cowardly of lies.

You will be more disappointed in life by the things that you do not do than by the things that you do.

If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and man.

In asking me to contribute a mite to the memorial to Gutenberg you give me pleasure and do me honor. The world concedes without hesitation or dispute that Gutenberg’s invention is incomparably the mightiest event...

We may not pay Satan reverence, for that would be indiscreet, but we can at least respect his talents.

If the writer doesn’t sweat, the reader will.

When red-headed people are above a certain social grade their hair is auburn.

A man is never more truthful than when he acknowledges himself a liar.

The more I the more I know people the more I like my dog

I once sent a dozen of my friends a telegram saying ‘flee at once – all is discovered.’ They all left town immediately.

Wagner’s music is better than it sounds.

To get the full value of joy you must have someone to divide it with.

One must travel, to learn. Every day, now, old Scriptural phrases that never possessed any significance for me before, take to themselves a meaning.

If voting made any difference they wouldn’t let us do it.

I always take Scotch whiskey at night as a preventive of toothache. I have never had the toothache; and what is more, I never intend to have it.

That’s just the way: a person does a low-down thing, and then he don’t want to take no consequences of it. Thinks as long as he can hide it, it ain’t no disgrace.

disguise repetitiousness of fact under variety of form: skin your fact each time and lay on a new cuticle of words. It deceives the eye; you think it is a new fact; it gives you...

I had been to school most all the time, and could spell, and read, and write just a little, and could say the multiplication table up to six times seven is thirty-five, and I don’t...

Why don’t you stay right at home in Boston and keep them?

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.

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.