Mark Twain

"Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts."

"Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn't."

"Why shouldn't truth be stranger than fiction? Fiction, after all, has to make sense."

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

"It is my belief that nearly any invented quotation, played with confidence, stands a good chance to deceive."

"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."

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

"When in doubt tell the truth."

"It's no wonder that truth is stranger than fiction. Fiction has to make sense."

"Truth is mighty and will prevail. There is nothing wrong with this, except that it ain't so."

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

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

"A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way."

"A man's character may be learned from the adjectives which he habitually uses in conversation."

"A person who won't read has no advantage over one who can't read."

"A person with a new idea is a crank until the idea succeeds."

"A round man cannot be expected to fit in a square hole right away. He must have time to modify his shape."

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

"Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured."

"Cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education."

"Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society."

"Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear."

"Do the thing you fear most and the death of fear is certain."

"Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first."

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

"Education consists mainly of what we have unlearned."

"Honesty is the best policy - when there is money in it."

"I came in with Halley's Comet in 1835. It is coming again next year, and I expect to go out with it. It will be the greatest disappointment of my life if I don't go out with Halley's Comet. The Almighty has said, no doubt: 'Now here are these two unaccountable freaks; they came in together, they must go out together.'"

"I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it."

"I never let schooling interfere with my education."

"If it's your job to eat a frog, it's best to do it first thing in the morning. And If it's your job to eat two frogs, it's best to eat the biggest one first."

"In the first place, God made idiots. That was for practice. Then he made school boards."

"In the Spring, I have counted 136 different kinds of weather inside of 24 hours."

"India has 2,000,000 gods and worships them all. In religion, all other countries are paupers; India is the only millionaire."

"It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare."

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

"It were not best that we should all think alike; it is difference of opinion that makes horse races."

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

"Principles have no real force except when one is well-fed."

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

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

"Suppose you were an idiot, and suppose you were a member of Congress; but I repeat myself."

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

"The Christian's Bible is a drug store. Its contents remain the same, but the medical practice changes."

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

"The finest clothing made is a person's own skin, but, of course, society demands something more than this."

"The lack of money is the root of all evil."