"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."

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

"Only one thing is impossible for God: To find any sense in any copyright law on the planet."

"I must have a prodigious quantity of mind; it takes me as much as a week sometimes to make it up."

"Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do. Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do."

"Name the greatest of all inventors: Accident."

"Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don't mind, it doesn't matter."

"Hain't we got all the fools in town on our side? And ain't that a big enough majority for any town?"

"Work like you don't need the money. Dance like no one is watching. And love like you've never been hurt."

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

"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education."

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

"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; they never look sour, they never let you feel that you are intruding, they smile at you and wag their tail, if they've got one, and they are always ready for a romp or an excursion or anything you want to propose."

"It was wonderful to find America, but it would have been more wonderful to miss it."

"Put all thine eggs in one basket and - watch that basket."

"Don't let schooling interfere with your education."

"I've had a lot of worries in my life, most of which never happened."

"The best way to cheer yourself up is to try to cheer somebody else up."

"In the afternoon the ship's company assembled aft, on deck, under the awnings; the flute, the asthmatic meodeon, and the consumptive clarinet crippled the Star Spangled Banner, the choir chased it to cover, and George came in with a peculiarly lacerating screech on the final note and slaughtered it. Nobody mourned. We carried out the corpse on three cheers (that joke was not intentional and I do not endorse it)."

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

"Loyalty to the Nation all the time, loyalty to the Government when it deserves it."

"Don't tell fish stories where the people know you; but particularly, don't tell them where they know the fish."

"The more things are forbidden, the more popular they become."

"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 old pieces of colored glass that have been in use through all the ages."

"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."

"I notice that you use plain, simple language, short words and brief sentences. That is the way to write English, it is the modern way and the best way. Stick to it; don't let fluff and flowers and verbosity creep in. When you catch an adjective, kill it. No, I don't mean utterly, but kill most of them, then the rest will be valuable. They weaken when they are close together. They give strength when they are wide apart. An adjective habit, or a wordy, diffuse, flowery habit, once fastened upon a person, is as hard to get rid of as any other vice."

"The fragrance of the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it."

"In Paris they simply stared when I spoke to them in French I never did succeed in making those idiots understand their own language."

"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 to result. When they see the result they marvel at the monster ball and wonder how the contriving of it came to be originally thought out and planned. Whereas there was no such planning, there was only a law: the ball once started, all the circumstances that happened to lie in its path would help to build it, in spite of themselves."

"The humorous story is American, the comic story is English, the witty story is French."

"Go to bed early get up early-this is wise."

"It usually takes me more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech."

"Education consists mainly of what we have unlearned."

"I don't like to commit myself about heaven and hell - you see, I have friends in both places."

"It made one mad, for pleasure; and we could not take our eyes from him, and the looks that went out of our eyes came from our hearts, and their dumb speech was worship."

"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 matter. As soon as the Governor understood the case, he pardoned Tom at once, and the creditors sold him down the river."

"The man who does not read books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them."

"When I am king they shall not have bread and shelter only, but also teachings out of books, for a full belly is little worth where the mind is starved."

"There are lies, damned lies and statistics."

"It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native criminal class except Congress."

"One should never use exclamation points in writing. It is like laughing at your own joke."

"The Creator made Italy with designs by Michelangelo."

"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 among the empty eternities!"

"Education: that which reveals to the wise, and conceals from the stupid, the vast limits of their knowledge."

"Now and then we had a hope that if we lived and were good, God would permit us to be pirates."

"A proof once established is better left so."

"The best of all lost arts is honesty."

"It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them."

"Prophesy is a good line of business, but it is full of risks."

"The man who is a pessimist before 48 knows too much; if he is an optimist after it, he knows too little."