"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."
"Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear - not absence of fear."
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education."
"Always acknowledge a fault. This will throw those in authority off their guard and give you an opportunity to commit more."
"Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society."
"A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval."
"Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint."
"An Englishman is a person who does things because they have been done before. An American is a person who does things because they haven't been done before."
"A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes."
"Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint."
"Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear - not absence of fear."
"If you have nothing to say, say nothing."
"Barring that natural expression of villainy which we all have, the man looked honest enough."
"The holy passion of Friendship is of so sweet and steady and loyal and enduring a nature that it will last through a whole life - time, if not asked to lend money."
"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover."
"It's not the size of the dog in the fight; it's the size of the fight in the dog."
"Do something every day that you don't want to do; this is the golden rule for acquiring the habit of doing your duty without pain."
"Always do right! This will gratify some people and astonish the rest."
"Total abstinence is so excellent a thing that it cannot be carried to too great an extent. In my passion for it I even carry it so far as to totally abstain from total abstinence itself."
"A man is never more truthful than when he acknowledges himself a liar."
"Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first."
"I don't think prohibition is practical. The Germans, you see, prevent it. Look at them. I am sorry to learn that they have just invented a method of making brandy out of Sawdust. Now, what chance will prohibition have when a man can take a rip saw and go out and get drunk with a fence rail? What is the good of prohibition if a man is able to make brandy smashes out of the shingles of his roof, or if he can get delirium tremens by drinking the legs off his kitchen table."
"Don't part with your illusions. When they are gone you may still exist, but you have ceased to live."
"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 man's first duty is to his own conscience and honor; the party and country come second to that, and never first."
"A round man cannot be expected to fit in a square hole right away. He must have time to modify his shape."
"Education: that which reveals to the wise, and conceals from the stupid, the vast limits of their knowledge."
"A successful book is not made of what is in it, but what is left out of it."
"All crimes should be punished with humiliations - public exposure in ridiculous and grotesque situations - and never in any other way. Death makes a hero of the villain, and he is envied by some spectators and imitators."
"A person who won't read has no advantage over one who can't read."
"Adam and Eve had many advantages but the principal one was, that they escaped teething."
"There are no accidents, all things have a deep and calculated purpose; sometimes the methods employed by Providence seem strange and incongruous, but we have only to be patient and wait for the result: then we recognize that no others would have answered the purpose, and we are rebuked and humbled."
"Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn't."
"Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please."
"Action speaks louder than words but not nearly as often."
"When we do not know a person--and also when we do--we have to judge his size by the size and nature of his achievements, as compared with the achievements of others in his special line of business--there is no other way."
"All democrats are insane, but not one of them knows it; none but the republicans and mugwumps know it. All the republicans are insane, but only the democrats and mugwumps can perceive it. The rule is perfect: in all matters of opinion our adversaries are insane."
"Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand."
"Grief can take care of itself, but to get the full value of a joy you must have somebody to divide it with."
"All say, how hard it is that we have to die - a strange complaint to come from the mouths of people who have had to live."
"All schools, all colleges, have two great functions: to confer, and to conceal, valuable knowledge."
"Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don't mind, it doesn't matter."
"All you need is ignorance and confidence and the success is sure."
"Honesty is the best policy - when there is money in it."
"Armaments were not created chiefly for the protection of the nations but for their enslavement."
"Humor is the great thing, the saving thing. The minute it crops up, all our irritations and resentments slip away and a sunny spirit takes their place."
"I am opposed to millionaires, but it would be dangerous to offer me the position."
"Be careless in your dress if you must, but keep a tidy soul."
"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."
"Biographies are but the clothes and buttons of a man - the biography of the man himself cannot be written."
"I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying that I approved of it."
"Apparently there is nothing that cannot happen today."
"Between believing a thing and thinking you know is only a small step and quickly taken."
"I don't give a damn for a man that can only spell a word one way."
"I have a higher and grander standard of principle than George Washington. He could not lie; I can, but I won't."
"Better a broken promise than none at all."
"Both marriage and death ought to be welcome: the one promises happiness, doubtless the other assures it."
"I have been through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened."
"But we are fearfully and wonderfully made, and we glorious Americans will occasionally astonish the God that created us when we get a fair start."
"But who prays for Satan? Who, in eighteen centuries, has had the common humanity to pray for the one sinner that needed it most?"
"I have never taken any exercise except sleeping and resting."
"I thoroughly disapprove of duels. If a man should challenge me, I would take him kindly and forgivingly by the hand and lead him to a quiet place and kill him."
"Chastity - you can carry it too far."
"Christianity will doubtless still survive in the earth ten centuries hence--stuffed and in a museum."
"Cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education."
"Classic. A book which people praise but don’t read."
"I was gratified to be able to answer promptly. I said I don’t know."
"By trying we can easily learn to endure adversity. Another man’s, I mean."
"The man who is a pessimist before 48 knows too much; if he is an optimist after it, he knows too little."
"India has 2,000,000 gods, and worships them all. In religion other countries are paupers; India is the only millionaire."
"We have not all had the good fortune to be ladies. We have not all been generals, or poets, or statesmen; but when the toast works down to the babies, we stand on common ground."
"There was never yet an uninteresting life. Such a thing is an impossibility. Inside of the dullest exterior there is a drama, a comedy, and a tragedy."
"A classic—something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read. There comes a time in every rightly constructed boy’s life when he has a raging desire to go somewhere and dig for hidden treasure."
"Put all your eggs in the one basket and—WATCH THAT BASKET."
"To arrive at a just estimate of a renowned man’s character one must judge it by the standards of his time, not ours."
"There is nothing you can say in answer to a compliment. I have been complimented myself a great many times, and they always embarrass me—I always feel that they have not said enough."
"It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress."
"What, then, is the true Gospel of consistency? Change. Who is the really consistent man? The man who changes. Since change is the law of his being, he cannot be consistent if he stick in a rut."
"War talk by men who have been in a war is always interesting; whereas moon talk by a poet who has not been in the moon is likely to be dull."
"Man is the only animal that blushes. Or needs to."
"Man will do many things to get himself loved, he will do all things to get himself envied. Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example."
"Wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been."
"Let us be thankful for the fools. But for them the rest of us could not succeed."
"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."
"The very ink in which history is written is merely fluid prejudice."
"True irreverence is disrespect for another man’s god."
"Grief can take care of itself, but to get the full value of a joy you must have somebody to divide it with."
"Nothing that grieves us can be called little: by the eternal laws of proportion a child’s loss of a doll and a king’s loss of a crown are events of the same size."
"Martyrdom covers a multitude of sins."
"The man with a new idea is a crank until the idea succeeds."
"There is no sadder sight than a young pessimist, except an old optimist."
"My books are water; those of the great geniuses is wine. Everybody drinks water."
"Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please."
"The radical invents the views. When he has worn them out the conservative adopts them."
"When angry, count four; when very angry, swear."