Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
It is our nature to conform; it is a force which not many can successfully resist. What is its seat? The inborn requirement of self-approval.
Age enlarges and enriches the powers of some musical instruments - notably those of the violin - but it seems to set a piano's teeth on edge.
Never refuse to do a kindness unless the act would work great injury to yourself, and never refuse to take a drink - under any circumstances.
The radical of one century is the conservative of the next. The radical invents the views. When he has worn them out, the conservative adopt.
Every one knew he could foretell wars and famines, though that was not so hard, for there was always a war, and generally a famine somewhere.
All I say is, kings is kings, and you got to make allowances. Take them all around, they're a mighty ornery lot. It's the way they're raised.
I admire the serene assurance of those who have religious faith. It is wonderful to observe the calm confidence of a Christian with four aces.
College is a place where a professor's lecture notes go straight to the students' lecture notes, without passing through the brains of either.
If animals could speak, the dog would be a blundering outspoken fellow; but the cat would have the rare grace of never saying a word too much.
Humor must be one of the chief attributes of God. Plants and animals that are distinctly humorous in form and characteristics are God's jokes.
Each man is afraid of his neighbor's disapproval - a thing which, to the general run of the human race, is more dreaded than wolves and death.
A marriage. . .will give a new gladness to the sunshine, a new fragrance to the flowers, a new beauty to the earth, and a new mystery to life.
No, I have no desire for riches. Honest poverty and a conscience, torpid through virtuous inaction, are more to me than corner lots and praise.
She was not quite what you would call refined. She was not quite what you would call unrefined. She was the kind of person that keeps a parrot.
This is the year 1492. I am eighty-two years of age. The things I am going to tell you are things which I saw myself as a child and as a youth.
There is no such thing as the Queen's English. The property has gone into the hands of a joint stock company and we own the bulk of the shares!
Delicacy - a sad, sad false delicacy - robs literature of the two best things among its belongings: Family-circle narratives & obscene stories.
My mother had a slender, small body, but a large heart-a heart so large that everybody's joys found welcome in it, and hospitable accommodation.
I have seen slower people than I am and more deliberate... and even quieter, and more listless, and lazier people than I am. But they were dead.
If we only had some God in the country's laws, instead of being in such a sweat to get him into the Constitution, it would be better all around.
What's the use you learning to do right , when it's troublesome to do right and it ain't no trouble to do wrong, and the wages is just the same?
I heard a Californian student in Heidelberg say, in one of his calmest moods, that he would rather decline two drinks than one German adjective.
Some men worship rank, some worship heroes, some worship power, some worship God, and over these ideals they dispute-but they all worship money.
I always take Scotch whiskey at night as a preventive of toothache. I have never had the toothache; and what is more, I never intend to have it.
Writing is the easiest thing in the world.... Just try it sometime. I sit up with a pipe in my mouth and a board on my knees and I scribble away.
By common consent of all the nations and all the ages the most valuable thing in this world is the homage of men, whether deserved or undeserved.
Nothing seems to please a fly so much as to be taken for a currant; and if it can be baked in a cake and palmed off on the unwary, it dies happy.
Who are we to create a heaven and hell for ourselves, excluding animals and plants in the bargain, just because we have the power to rationalize?
I wish to become rich, so that I can instruct the people and glorify honest poverty a little, like those kind hearted, fat, benevolent people do.
Often a quite assified remark becomes sanctified by use and petrified by custom; it is then a permanency, its term of activity a geologic period.
Hardly a man in the world has an opinion upon morals, political, or religion which he got otherwise than through his associations and sympathies.
In the small town of Hannibal, Missouri, when I was a boy, everybody was poor, but didn't know it; and everybody was comfortable and did know it.
At noon I observed a bevy of nude young native women bathing in the sea, and I went and sat down on their clothes to keep them from being stolen.
There are 869 different forms of lying, but only one of them has been squarely forbidden. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.
Yes, always avoid violence. In this age of charity and kindliness, the time has gone by for such things. Leave dynamite to the low and unrefined.
Nothing agrees with me. If I drink coffee, it gives me dyspepsia; if I drink wine, it gives me the gout; if I go to church, it gives me dysentery.
Life ain't about how fast you run or how high you climb, It's all about how good you bounce. A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval.
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.
If you want me to give you a two-hour presentation, I am ready today. If you want only a five-minute speech, it will take me two weeks to prepare.
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.
December is the toughest month of the year. Others are July, January, September, April, November, May, March, June, October, August, and February.
The humorous story is told gravely; the teller does his best to conceal the fact that he even dimly suspects that there is anything funny about it.
By and by when each nation has 20,000 battleships and 5,000,000 soldiers we shall all be safe and the wisdom of statesmanship will stand confirmed.
We must put up with clothes as they are they have their reason for existing. They are on us to expose us to advertise what we wear them to conceal.
We have infinite trouble in solving man-made mysteries; it is only when we set out to discover "the secret of God" that our difficulties disappear.
This editor is a critic. He has pulled out his carving-knife and his tomahawk and is starting after a book which he is going to have for breakfast.
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.
They all laid their heads together like as many lawyers when they are gettin' ready to prove that a man's heirs ain't got any right to his property.
Wherefore being all of one mind, we do highly resolve that government of the grafted by the grafter for the grafter shall not perish from the earth.
I am a democrat only on principle, not by instinct, nobody is that. Doubtless some people say they are, but this world is grievously given to lying.