"I asked Tom if countries always apologized when they had done wrong and he said: "Yes: the little one does.""

"All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence, and then success is sure."

"I have too much respect for the truth to drag it out on every trifling occasion."

"There is no sadder sight than a young pessimist."

"Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company."

"Human nature is all alike."

"Man has imagined a heaven, and has left entirely out of it the supremest of all his delights...sexual intercourse!...His heaven is like himself: strange, interesting, astonishing, grotesque. I give you my word, it has not a single feature in it that he actually values."

"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 be to anybody, for I did not know that it was in me. If any had asked me a single day before if it was in me, I should have told them frankly no, it was not.That is the way with us; we may go on half of our life not knowing such a thing is in us, when in reality it was there all the time, and all we needed was something to turn up that would call for it."

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

"After all these years, I see that I was mistaken about Eve in the beginning; it is better to live outside the Garden with her than inside it without her."

"Wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been."

"A few fly bites cannot stop a spirited horse."

"The fact that man knows right from wrong proves his intellectual superiority to the other creatures, but the fact that he can do wrong proves his moral inferiority to any creatures that cannot."

"Wherever he found his speech growing too modern -- which was about every sentence or two -- he ladled in a few such Scriptural phrases as "exceeding sore," "and it came to pass," etc., and made things satisfactory again. "And it came to pass" was his pet. If he had left that out, his Bible would have been only a pamphlet."

"I have lived a long life and had many troubles, most of which never happened."

"It's lovely to live on a raft. We had the sky up there, all speckled with stars, and we used to lay on our backs and look up at them, and discuss about whether they was made or only just happened."

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

"You may say what you want to, but in my opinion she had more sand in her than any girl I ever see; in my opinion she was just full of sand."

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

"Patriot: the person who can holler the loudest without knowing what he is hollering about."

"When a person cannot deceive himself the chances are against his being able to deceive other people."

"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."

"If the world comes to an end, I want to be in Cincinnati. Everything comes there ten years later."

"Always do what is right. It will gratify half of mankind and astound the other."

"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!"

"The preacher who casts a vote for conscience' sake, runs the risk of starving."

"Memories which someday will become all beautiful when the last annoyance that encumbers them shall have faded out of our minds."

"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 or human toil or trouble or sorrow or weariness, and the memory of it will remain with me always."

"The main difference between a cat and a lie is that a cat only has nine lives."

"Do I know you? I know you clear through. I was born and raised in the South, and I've lived in the North; so I know the average all around. The average man's a coward."

"A hypocritical businessman, whose fortune had been the misfortune of many others, told Mark Twain piously, "Before I die I intend to make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. I want to climb to the top of Mount Sinai and read the Ten Commandments aloud. "I have a better idea, suggested Twain. "Why don't you stay right at home in Boston and keep them?"

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

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

"The holy passion of Friendship is of so sweet and steady and loyal and enduring a nature that it will last through a whole lifetime, if not asked to lend money."

"Tom's whole being applauded this idea. It was deep, and dark, and awful; the hour, the circumstances, the surroundings, were in keeping with it."

"Any emotion, if it is sincere, is involuntary."

"I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened."

"Don't part with your illusions. When they are gone, you may still exist, but you have ceased to live."

"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."

"Find a job you enjoy doing, and you will never have to work a day in your life."

"A woman's intuition is better than a man's. Nobody knows anything, really, you know, and a woman can guess a good deal nearer than a man."

"It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so."

"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."

"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 which we recognize, with regret, and sometimes with a secret shame, that we cannot do. We find not much in ourselves to admire, we are always privately wanting to be like somebody else. If everybody was satisfied with himself, there would be no heroes."

"To get the full value of a joy you must have somebody to divide it with."

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

"A dog is der Hund the dog; a women is die Frau the wom[an]; a horse is das Pferd, the horse; now you put that dog in the Genitive case, & is he the same dog he was before? No sir; he is das Hundes; put him in the Dative case & what is he? Why, he is dem Hund. Now you snatch him into the accusative case & how is it with him? Why he is den Hunden? ... Read moreBut suppose he happens to be twins & you have to pluralize him, what then? Why sir they'll swap that twin dog around thro' the four cases till he'll think he's an entire International Dog Show all in his own person. I don't like dogs, but I wouldn't treat a dog like that. I wouldn't even treat a borrowed dog that way."

"I haven't any right to criticize books, and I don't do it except when I hate them. I often want to criticize Jane Austen, but her books madden me so that I can't conceal my frenzy from the reader; and therefore I have to stop every time I begin. Every time I read Pride and Prejudice I want to dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone."

"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 never smoke to excess - that is, I smoke in moderation, only one cigar at a time."