- In the beginning God created man. Then He created woman. Then God felt sorry for man, and He gave him tobacco.
- To cease smoking is the easiest thing I ever did. I ought to know, because I’ve done it a thousand times.
- Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example.
- Honesty is the best policy — when there is money in it.
- A rich man can have any principles he likes.
- Never put off till tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow just as well.
- There are two times in a man’s life when he should not speculate: when he can’t afford it, and when he can.
- Truth is the most valuable thing we have. Let us economize it.
- When in doubt, tell the truth.
- It is better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than to open it and remove all doubt.
- There are three things a woman can make out of nothing: a hat, a salad, and a scene.
- I don’t want to spoil my relations with either heaven or hell. I have friends in both places.
- The only reason God created man was because He was disappointed with the monkey.
- Adam was but human — this explains it all. He did not want the apple for the apple’s sake, he wanted it only because it was forbidden. The mistake was in not forbidding the serpent; then he would have eaten the serpent.
- 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.
- Glory is smoke, success an accident. The only sure thing here on earth is uncertainty.
- Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn’t.
- 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.
- Better a young dung-beetle than an old bird of paradise.
- The report of my death was an exaggeration.
- Good friends, good books, and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.
- Everyone is a moon, and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody.
- Cross a king with a prostitute and the result is exactly what the English mean by a nobleman.
- If I have done any work, it is because I felt it as play. If I had had to work, I should never have done anything.
- There is not a parallel on earth that is not convinced it could become the equator if given the chance.
- Always do right. This will gratify some people, and astonish the rest.
- A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.
- We all live under the shelter of a cowardice we call our principles.
- Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear — not absence of fear.
- It is a pity the world has to give up so many pleasant things merely because they are supposed to be unhealthy. I personally doubt that the Creator would have given us any stimulant which, used in moderation, is unhealthy. Germs are the exception. And yet there are people who stubbornly deprive themselves of a number of things — things to eat, drink or smoke — that have somehow acquired a dubious name. In the name of health these people give up almost everything. And they are left with bare health. An inexplicable business! It is like giving your whole fortune for a cow that has already gone dry.
- Noise proves nothing. Often a hen who has merely laid an egg cackles as if she laid an asteroid.
- Man is the only animal that blushes. Or needs to.
- I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.
- Some people claim there is no difference between a man and an ass — that is unfair to the ass.
- Let us so live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.
- There is no such thing as cannot-happen today.
- The secret source of Humor itself is not joy but sorrow.
- Often the surest way to convey misinformation is to tell the strict truth.
- A man of sound sense cannot be happy, because he sees reality and knows how terrible it is.
- Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do.
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