The test of any good fiction is that you should care something for the characters; the good to succeed, the bad to fail. The trouble with most fiction is that you want them all to...

In the beginning of a change the patriot is a scarce man, and brave, and hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a patriot.

If you should rear a duck in the heart of the Sahara, no doubt it would swim if you brought it to the Nile.

When even the brightest mind in our world has been trained up from childhood in a superstition of any kind, it will never be possible for that mind, in its maturity, to examine sincerely, dispassionately,...

The face of the water, in time, became a wonderful book- a book that was a dead language to the uneducated passenger, but which told its mind to me without reserve, delivering its most cherished...

In your country and mine we should have the privilege of making fun of this kind of morality, but it would be unkind to do it here.Many of these people have the reasoning faculty, but...

It is strange the way the ignorant and inexperienced so often and so undeservedly succeed when the informed and the experienced fail. All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence, and then success...

Today the same thing over. I’ve got it up the tree again.

Evolution is a blind giant who rolls a snowball down a hill. The ball is made of flakes—circumstances. They contribute to the mass without knowing it. They adhere without intention, and without foreseeing what is...

Perfect grammar–persistent, continuous, sustained–is the fourth dimension, so to speak: many have sought it, but none has found it.

Man is the only Patriot. He sets himself apart in his own country, under his own flag, and sneers at the other nations, and keeps multitudinous uniformed assassins on hand at heavy expense to grab...

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.

So I learned then, that gold in it’s native state is but dull, unornamental stuff, and that only low-born metals excite the admiration of the ignorant with an ostentatious glitter. However, like the rest of...

Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond; cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education.

People don’t really read your books, they only say they do, to keep you from feeling bad.

Then at once they reached and hovered upon the imminent verge of sleep – but an intruder came, now, that would not “down”. It was conscience. They began to feel a vague fear that they...

I went to Maui to stay a week and remained five. I never spent so pleasant a month before, or bade any place goodbye so regretfully. I have not once thought of business, or care...

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.

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....

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.

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...

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.