When angry, count four; when very angry, swear.  

It is not best that we should all think alike; it is difference of opinion that make horse races. (from "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar," 1894)   

God has put something noble and good into every heart His hand created.   

There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesome returns of conjectures out of such trifling investment of fact.  

Wagner's music is better than it sounds.  

The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them.  

When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.  

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

No man or woman knows what perfect love is, until they have been married a quarter of a century.  

Few sinners are saved after the first 20 minutes of a sermon.  

A powerful agent is the right word. Whenever we come upon one of those intensely right words in a book or newspaper the resulting effect is physical as well as spiritual, and electrically prompt.  

There are some books that refuse to be written. They stand their ground year after year and will not be persuaded. It isn't because the book is not there and worth being written  it is only because the right form of the story does not present itself. There is only one right form for a story and if you fail to find that form the story will not tell itself.  

Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please.  

Denial ain't just a river in Egypt.  

If there are no cigars in heaven, I shall not go.  

Let us endeavor so to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.  

Part of the secret of success in life is to eat what you like and let the food fight it out inside.  

Familiarity breeds contempt. How accurate that is. The reason we hold truth in such respect is because we have so little opportunity to get familiar with it.  

My father was an amazing man. The older I got, the smarter he got.  

The secret source of humor itself is not joy, but sorrow. There is no humor in heaven.   

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.  

October is one of those dangerous months to speculate in stocks. The others are January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, November, and December.  

Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear  not absence of fear. Except a creature be part coward, it is not a compliment to say it is brave.  

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things 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.  

Write without pay until somebody offers to pay you. If nobody offers within three years, sawing wood is what you were intended for.  

It is better to deserve honors and not have them than to have them and not deserve them.  

A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.  

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

Behold, the fool saith 'Put not all thine eggs in the one basket'  which is but a manner of saying, 'Scatter your money and your attention;' but the wise man saith, 'Put all your eggs in the one basket and  watch that basket.'"  

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

The human race is a race of cowards; and I am not only marching in that procession but carrying a banner.  

I can teach anybody how to get what they want out of life. The problem is that I can't find anybody who can tell me what they want.  

A banker is a fellow who lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining and wants it back the minute it begins to rain.  

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.  

Buy land. They've stopped making it.  

Always do right this will gratify some and astonish the rest.  

When in doubt, tell the truth.  

The man who sets out to carry a cat by its tail learns something that will always be useful and which never will grow dim or doubtful.  

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

The human race has one really effective weapon, and that is laughter.  

If everybody was satisfied with himself, there would be no heroes.   

I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.  

We are always more anxious to be distinguished for a talent which we do not possess, than to be praised for the 15 others which we do possess.  

The average American may not know who his grandfather was. But the American was, however, one degree better off than the average Frenchman who, as a rule, was in considerable doubt as to who his father was.   

Get your facts first and then you can distort them as much as you wish.  

I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened.  

Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example.  

It's not the size of the dog in the fight  it's the size of the fight in the dog.  

In religion and politics people's beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at secondhand, and without examination, from authorities who have not themselves examined the questions at issue but have taken them at secondhand from other non-examiners, whose opinions about them were not worth a brass farthing.  , 's Autobiography, 1959