Mark Twain

Loyalty to petrified opinions never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul in this world — and never will.

Be respectful to your superiors, if you have any.

Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.

Among the three or four million cradles now rocking in the land are some which this nation would preserve for ages as sacred things, if we could know which ones they are.

We haven't all had the good fortune to be ladies; we haven't all been generals, or poets, or statesmen; but when the toast works down to the babies, we stand on common ground.

The funniest things are the forbidden.

A baby is an inestimable blessing and bother.

This poor little one-horse town.

Is not this insanity plea becoming rather common? Is it not so common that the reader confidently expects to see it offered in every criminal case that comes before the courts? [...] Really, what we want now, is not laws against crime, but …

Formerly, if you killed a man, it was possible that you were insane—but now, if you, having friends and money, kill a man, it is evidence that you are a lunatic.

Barring that natural expression of villainy which we all have, the man looked honest enough.

Ah, it was worth ten years of a man’s life to be dead then! Everything was pleasant. I was in a good neighbourhood, for all the dead people that lived near me belonged to the best families in the city.

He is now fast rising from affluence to poverty.

Tomorrow night I appear for the first time before a Boston audience — 4000 critics.

Soap and education are not as sudden as a massacre, but they are more deadly in the long run.

I have seen Chinamen abused and maltreated in all the mean, cowardly ways possible to the invention of a degraded nature, but I never saw a policeman interfere in the matter and I never saw a Chinaman righted in a court of justice for …

He was ignorant of the commonest accomplishments of youth. He could not even lie.

I don't see no p'ints about that frog that's any better'n any other frog.

I'll risk forty dollars that he can outjump any frog in Calaveras county.

I haven't a particle of confidence in a man who has no redeeming petty vices whatsoever.