Mark Twain Life Quotations [Page 2]

If the desire to kill and the opportunity to kill always came together, who would escape hanging? Framed in a more positive light, this tells us also that if we wish to accomplish a particular thing then we need to increase our level of desire for that thing and to create or seek out the opportunities and right environment for it to happen without fail.

The man who doesn't read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them. It is said that leaders are readers. However if they read trashy magazines for the majority of their time and they never run with the information that they glean from resourceful books, then they may as well have not taken any time to read at all. It is easier to stay out than get out.

I have spent most of my time worrying about things that have never happened. Worrying is not an action! In fact, it is action that alleviates concern and dissipates worries. Take more actions when you feel that worry is creeping in to steal your time. It need not be a huge action, any action in the direction you want to go will do.

When I was fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have him around. When I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years. See what happens when you "know it all", at any stage of life? Farther down the track you may see clearly how certain personal opinions, held onto too tightly, could be fogging up the view, and providing incorrect insight. Prosperity is the best protector of principle.

He had an uncommon fondness for cats. As an old man summering in New Hampshire, Twain even rented kittens from a nearby farm to keep him company until he returned home. "If man could be crossed with the cat," said Twain, "it would improve the man, but it would deteriorate the cat." There's always something about your success that displeases even your best friends.

Man can seldom - very, very, seldom - fight a winning fight against his training; the odds are too heavy.

We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it - and stop there.

The exercise of an extraordinary gift is the supremest pleasure in life.

You can't make a life over. Society wouldn't let you if you would.

Suppose . . . burglars had made entry into this . . . [library]. Picture them seated here on this floor, pouring the light of their dark-lanterns over some books they found, and thus absorbing moral truths and getting moral uplift. The whole course of their lives would have been changed. As it was, they kept straight on in their immoral way and were sent to jail. For all I know, they may next be sent to Congress.

The work that is really a man's own work is play and not work at all.

Life is short, break the rules.

The only certainties in life are death and taxes.

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

He who asks is a fool for five minutes, but he who does not ask remains a fool forever.

There is no such thing as an ordinary life.

Whoever has lived long enough to find out what life is, knows how deep a debt of gratitude we owe to Adam, the first great benefactor of our race. He brought death into the world.

The first half of life consists of the capacity to enjoy with the chance; the last half consists of the chance without the capacity.

Life is short. Forgive quickly, kiss slowly and love truly.

The unexamined life may not be worth living, but the life too closely examined may not be lived at all.