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.

When you fish for love, bait with your heart, not your brain.

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

The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.

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

The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.

Obscurity and a competence—that is the life that is best worth living.

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

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

I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.

Kindness is a language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see.

Any emotion, if it is sincere, is involuntary.

The dog is a gentleman; I hope to go to his heaven not man's.

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

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

Substitute 'damn' every time you're inclined to write 'very;' your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.

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

I did not attend his funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it.

I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did. I said I didn’t know.

What would men be without women? Scarce, sir...mighty scarce.

I've lived through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened.

The easy confidence with which I know another man's religion is folly teaches me to suspect that my own is also.

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

A clear conscience is the sure sign of a bad memory.

I didn't have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.

A banker is a fellow who lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining, but wants it back the minute it begins to rain.

April 1. This is the day upon which we are reminded of what we are on the other three hundred and sixty-four.

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.

I must have a prodigious amount of mind; it takes me as much as a week, sometimes, to make it up!

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

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

If Christ were here there is one thing he would not be—a Christian.

In the first place God made idiots. This was for practice. Then he made school boards.

What is Man? Man is a noisome bacillus whom Our Heavenly Father created because he was disappointed in the monkey.

A successful book is not made of what is in it, but what is left out of it.

Under certain circumstances, profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer."[Mark Twain, a Biography]

The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.

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

Humor is mankind's greatest blessing.

The lack of money is the root of all evil.

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

Familiarity breeds contempt and children.

It usually takes me two or three days to prepare an impromptu speech.

There are those who scoff at the schoolboy, calling him frivolous andshallow: Yet it was the schoolboy who said 'Faith is believing what youknow ain't so'.

The source of all humor is not laughter, but sorrow.

I take my only exercise acting as a pallbearer at the funerals of my friends who exercise regularly.

I can last two months on a good compliment.

Man was made at the end of the week's work when God was tired.

If we would learn what the human race really is at bottom, we need only observe it in election times.

Be respectful to your superiors, if you have any.

In Paris they just simply opened their eyes and stared when we spoke to them in French! We never did succeed in making those idiots understand their own language.

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

Humor is tragedy plus time.

There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.

If I were to construct a God I would furnish Him with some way and qualities and characteristics which the Present lacks.

If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything.

A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.

Never tell the truth to people who are not worthy of it.

Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't.

The Bible has noble poetry in it... and some good morals and a wealth of obscenity, and upwards of a thousand lies.

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

Herodotus says, "Very few things happen at the right time, and the rest do not happen at all: the conscientious historian will correct these defects.

If a cat sits on a hot stove, that cat won't sit on a hot stove again. That cat won't sit on a cold stove either. That cat just don't like stoves.

Life would be infinitely happier if we could only be born at the age of eighty and gradually approach eighteen.

When ill luck begins, it does not come in sprinkles, but in showers.

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.

Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to reform (or pause and reflect).

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.

It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.

The weakest of all weak things is a virtue which has not been tested in the fire.

Yes - en I's rich now, come to look at it. I owns myself, en I's wuth eight hund'd dollars. I wisht I had de money, I wouldn' want no mo'.

Be wise as a serpent and wary as a dove!

To believe yourself brave is to be brave; it is the one only essential thing.

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

Sanity and happiness are an impossible combination.

The best way to cheer yourself is to try to cheer someone else up.

What gets us into trouble is not what we don't know. It's what we know for sure that just ain't so.

Most people can't bear to sit in church for an hour on Sundays. How are they supposed to live somewhere very similar to it for eternity?

A man is accepted into a church for what he believes and he is turned out for what he knows.

Ours is a terrible religion. The fleets of the world could swim in spacious comfort in the innocent blood it has spilt.

The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter. ’tis the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.

My books are water; those of the great geniuses is wine. Everybody drinks water.

Don't say the old lady screamed. Bring her on and let her scream.

Write what you know.

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

Wit is the sudden marriage of ideas which before their union were not perceived to have any relation.

Which is him?" The grammar was faulty, maybe, but we could not know, then, that it would go in a book someday.

The dream vocabulary shaves meanings finer and closer than do the world's daytime dictionaries.

We have not the reverent feeling for the rainbow that the savage has, because we know how it is made. We have lost as much as we gained by prying into that matter.

That is just the way with some people. They get down on a thing when they don’t know nothing about it.

The less a man knows the bigger the noise he makes and the higher the salary he commands.