Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example.		Wrinkles should merely indicate where the smiles have been.
	Happiness ain't a thing in itself- it's only a contrast with something that ain't pleasant. . . . And so, as soon as the novelty is over and the force of the contrast dulled, it ain't happiness any longer, and you have to get something fresh.
Man cannot be comfortable without his own approval.		When I was younger, I could remember anything, whether it happened or not.
	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.
Let us not be too particular: it is better to have old secondhand diamonds than none at all.		Grief can take care of itself, but to get the full value of a joy you must have somebody to divide it with.
	Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.
Under certain circumstances, profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer.		Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; truth isn't.
	Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do. . . . Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.
Fame is a vapor; popularity an accident; the only earthly certainty is oblivion.		The work that is really a man's own work is play and not really work at all.
	Do not offer a compliment and ask a favor at the same time. A compliment that is charged for is not valuable.
The common eye sees only the outside of things, and judges by that, but the seeing eye pierces through and reads the heart and soul, finding there capacities which the outsides didn't indicate or promise, and which the other kind couldn't detect.		There is a moral sense and an immoral sense. History shows that the moral sense enables us to see morality and how to avoid it, and that immoral sense enables us to perceive immorality and how to enjoy it.
	Words are only painted fire; a look is fire itself.
There is probably no pleasure equal to the pleasure of climbing a dangerous Alp; but it is a pleasure which is confined strictly to people who can find pleasure in it.		What's the use you learning to do right, when it's troublesome to do right and ain't no trouble to do wrong, and the wages is just the same?
	Homely truth is unpalatable.
Always do right. This will gratify some people, and astonish the rest.		You can't pray a lie.
	There is nothing in the world like a persuasive speech to fuddle the mental apparatus.
We get our morals from books. I didn't get mine from books, but I know that morals do come from books - theoretically, at least.		When I reflect upon the number of disagreeable people who I know have gone to a better world, I am moved to lead a different life.
	Prophecies which promise valuable things, desirable things, good things, worthy things, never come true. Prophecies of this kind are like wars fought in a good cause - they are so rare that they don't count.
It's noble to be good, and it's nobler to teach others to be good, and less trouble.		I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did. I said I didn't know.
	The lie, as a virtue, a principle, is eternal; the lie, as a recreation, a solace, a refuge in time of need, the fourth Grace, the tenth Muse, man's best and surest friend, is immortal. . . -"On the Decay of the Art of Lying"
I never did a thing in all my life, virtuous or otherwise, that I didn't repent of in twenty-four hours.		I haven't a particle of confidence in a man who has no redeeming petty vices.
	You can't make a life over - society wouldn't let you do it if you would.
It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress.		Habit is habit and not to be flung out of the window by any man but coaxed down-stairs a step at a time.
	Its name is Public Opinion. It is held in reverence. It settles everything. Some think it is the voice of God.
Hain't we got all the fools in town on our side? And hain't that the majority in any town?		The country is the real thing, the substantial thing, the eternal thing, it is the thing to watch over and care for and be loyal to; institutions are extraneous
	Let us be thankful for the fools. But for them the rest of us could not succeed.
To some people it is fatal to be noticed by greatness.		We don't care to eat toadstools that think they are truffles.
	Good breeding consists in concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of the other person.
It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them.		Only when a republic's life is in danger should a man uphold his government when it is in the wrong. There is no other time.
	It is easy to find fault, if one has that disposition. There was once a man who, not being able to find any other fault with his coal, complained that there were too many prehistoric toads in it.
Soap and education are not as sudden as a massacre, but they are more deadly in the long run.		Few of us can stand prosperity. Another man's, I mean.
	There ain't no way to find out why a snorer can't hear himself snore.
The elastic heart of youth cannot be compressed into one constrained shape long at a time.		The best way to cheer yourself is to try to cheer somebody else up.
	Epitaphs are cheap, and they do a poor chap a world of good after he is dead, especially if he had hard luck while he was alive. I wish they were used more.
Nothing remains the same. When a man goes back to look at the house of his childhood, it has always shrunk: there is no instance of such a house being as big as the picture in memory and imagination calls for.		The dreamer's valuation of a thing lost- not another man- is the only standard to measure it by, and his grief for it makes it large and great and fine, and is worthy of our reverence in all cases.
	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 without her . . .I should be sorry to have that voice fall silent and pass out of my life. "Extracts from Adam's Diary"
There has never been an intelligent person of the age of sixty who would consent to live his life over again. His or anyone else's.		Consider well the proportions of things. It is better to be a young June-bug than an old bird of paradise.
	Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear- not absence of fear.
Optimist: day-dreamer more elegantly spelled.		Man is the only animal that blushes. Or needs to.
	What do you call love, hate, charity, revenge, humanity, magnanimity, forgiveness? Different results of the one master impulse: the necessity of securing one's self-approval.
No one is willing to acknowledge a fault in himself when a more agreeable motive can be found for the estrangement of his acquaintances.		Troubles are only mental; it is the mind that manufactures them, and the mind can forget them, banish them, abolish them.
	I used to worship the mighty genius of Michaelangelo - that man who was great in poetry, painting, sculpture, architecture - great in everything he undertook. But I do not want Michaelangelo for breakfast. . . . I like a change, occasionally.
A battle is only truly great or small according to its results.		The man with a new idea is a crank until the idea succeeds.
	I must have a prodigious quantity of mind; it takes me as much as a week, sometimes, to make it up.
The holy passion of friendship is of so sweet and steady and loyal and enduring a nature that it will last through a lifetime, if not asked to lend money.		If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man.
	It is curious - curious that physical courage should be so common in the world, and moral courage so rare.
Shut the door. Not that it lets in the cold but it lets out the coziness.		Do not put off till tomorrow what can be put off till day-after-tomorrow just as well.
	You can find in a text whatever you bring, if you will stand between it and the mirror of your imagination. You may not see your ears, but they are there.
Thunder is good, thunder is impressive; but it is the lightning that does the work.		It is best to read the weather forecast before we pray for rain.
	"Classic." A book which people praise and don't read.
Every man is in his own person the whole human race without a detail lacking. . . . I knew I should not find in any philosophy a single thought which had not passed through my own head, nor a single thought which had not passed through the heads of millions and millions before I was born.		We should be careful to get out of experience only the wisdom that is in it - and stop there; lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot stove-lid. She will never sit down on a hot stove-lid again - and that is well; but she will also never sit down on a cold one anymore.
	My mother had a great deal of trouble with me, but I think she enjoyed it.
For all the talk you hear about knowledge being such a wonderful thing, instinct is worth forty of it for real unerringness.		Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond; cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education.
	Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand.
Get your facts first. . . then distort 'em as much as you please.		There are three kinds of lies: lies, damn lies, and statistics.
	Drawing on my fine command of language, I said nothing.
The man who doesn't read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them.		It is amazing what little harm doctors do when one considers all the opportunity they have.
	The report of my death was an exaggeration.
It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.		In Paris they simply stared when I spoke to them in French; I never did succeed in making those idiots understand their language.
	Time cools, time clarifies; no mood can be maintained quite unaltered through the course of hours.
Laughter is the greatest weapon that we humans possess, but it's the one we use the least.		Let us endeavor so to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.
	When angry, count four; when very angry, swear.
When you cannot get a compliment any other way pay yourself one.		It was wonderful to find America, but it would have been more wonderful to miss it.
	You cannot depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.
Always acknowledge a fault frankly. This will throw those in authority off their guard and give you a chance to commit one.		Just the omission of Jane Austen's books alone would make a fairly good library out of a library that hadn't a book in it.