Mark Twain's Life Lessons Men Learn Too Late In Life

Never allow someone to be your priority while allowing yourself to be their option. The most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why. The more I learn about people, the more I like my job. 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. Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect. If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything. Noise proves nothing. Often a hen who has laid an egg cackles as if she had laid an asteroid. Never argue with stupid people. They will drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience. Wrinkles should merely indicate where the smiles have been. Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint. The worst loneliness is not to be comfortable with yourself. Giving up smoking is the easiest thing in the world. I know because I've done it thousands of times. When your friends begin to flatter you on how young you look, it's a sure sign you're getting old. Loyalty to country always. Loyalty to government when it deserves it. Do not complain about growing old. It is a privilege denied to me. Kindness is a language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see. It's better to be an optimist who is sometimes wrong than a pessimist who is almost always right. By trying, we can easily learn to endure adversity. No woman or man really knows what perfect love is until they have been married a quarter of a century. If everyone was satisfied with himself, there would be no heroes. You meet people who forget you. You forget the people you meet. But sometimes you meet those people you can't forget. Those are your friends. Concerning the difference between man and the jackass, some observers hold that there isn't any. But this wrongs the jackass. In order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to attain. The man who does not read has no advantage over the man who cannot read. April 1. This is the day upon which we are reminded of what we are on the other 364. 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. Always acknowledge fault frankly. This will throw those in authority off guard and give you an opportunity to make a choice. The fact that man knows right from wrong proves his intellectual superiority to the other creatures. But the fact that he can do no wrong proves his moral inferiority to any creatures that cannot. The man who was a pessimist before 48 knows too much. If he is an optimist after it, he knows too little. My experience of men had long ago taught me that one of the surest ways of begetting an enemy was to do some stranger an act of kindness which should lay upon him the irritating sense of an obligation. Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it. If you have to swallow a frog, don't stare at it too long. The only way to keep your health is to eat what you don't want, drink what you don't like, and do what you'd rather not. Buy land. They're not making it anymore. 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. Life is short. Break the rules. Forgive quickly. Kiss slowly. Love truly. Laugh uncontrollably. And never regret anything that makes you smile. The lack of money is the root of all evil. Always obey your parents when they are present. This is the best policy in the long run, because if you don't, they will make you. Worrying is like paying a debt you don't owe. Twenty years from now, you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the one. There is no easy or quick plan to happiness. There is no single spot where you can start. Where you are right now is the best place to begin. Everyone is a moon, and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody. Of all the animals, man is the only one that is cruel. He is the only one that inflicts pain for the pleasure of doing it. Circumstances make man, not man's circumstances. Man was made at the end of the week's work. God was tired. The truth must be served like a coat, and not thrown in the face like a wet towel. The trouble is not in dying for a friend, but in finding a friend worth dying for. It is strange the way the ignorant and inexperienced so often, and so undeservedly, succeed, when the informed and the experienced fail. All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence, and then success is sure. Let us live so that when we come to die, even the undertaker will be sorry. The secret to getting ahead is getting started. Always do what is right. It will gratify half of mankind and astound the other. Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first. Man will do many things to get himself loved. He will do all things to get himself envied. One frequently only finds out how really beautiful a beautiful woman is after considerable acquaintance with her. It's better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than open it and remove all doubt. My works are like water. The works of the great masters are like wine. But everyone drinks water. I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it. A half-truth is the most cowardly of lies. When you fish for love, bait with your heart, not your brain. Do right and you will be conspicuous. It's easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled. A man should not be without morals. It is better to have bad morals than none at all. Better a broken promise than none at all. Courage is resistance to fear. Mastery of fear, not absence of fear. Action speaks louder than words, but not nearly as often. The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time. Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please. 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. Virtue has never been as respectable as money. Few things are harder to than the annoyance of a good example. Nothing so needs reforming as other people's habits. Any emotion, if it is sincere, is involuntary. How little a thing can make us happy when we feel that we have earned it. A man may have no bad habits and have worse. We can secure other people's approval if we do it right and try hard. But our own is worth a hundred of it, and no way has been found out of securing that. The human race has only one really effective weapon, and that is laughter. If you don't read the newspaper, you're uninformed. If you read the newspaper, you're misinformed. Work like you don't need the money, dance like no one is watching, and love as soon as one is at rest in this world. He goes on something else to worry about. 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. A sin takes on new and real terrors when there seems a chance that it is going to be found out. A sound heart is a surer guide than an ill-trained conscience. Only two things will regret on deathbed, that we are little loved and little traveled. There is no such thing as an ordinary life. Memories which someday will become all beautiful when the last annoyance that encumbers them shall have faded out of our minds. Conscience takes up more room than all the rest of a person's insides. There are several good protections against temptations, but the surest is cowardice. Never argue with a fool. Onlookers may not be able to tell the difference. Name the greatest of all inventors. Accident. Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason. When people do not respect us, we are sharply offended. Yet in his private heart, no man respects himself much. A clear conscience is the sure sign of a bad memory. When I was younger, I could not remember anything, whether it had happened or not, but my faculties are decaying now, and soon I shall be so I cannot remember any but the things that never happened. It is sad to go to pieces like this, but we all have to do it. The secret source of humor itself is not joy but sorrow. The right word may be effective, but no word was ever as effective as a rightly timed pause. A good lawyer knows the law. A clever one takes the judge to lunch. Honesty. The best of all the lost arts. When angry, count to four. When very angry, swear. In certain trying circumstances, urgent circumstances, desperate circumstances, profanity furnishes a relief denied even to prayer. Be careless in your dress if you must, but keep a tidy soul. Prosperity is the best protector of principle. There is a charm about the forbidden that makes it unspeakably desirable. We recognize that there are no trivial occurrences in life if we get the right focus on them. A man has no business to be depressed by a disappointment. Anyway, he ought to make up his mind to get even. There is no sadder sight than a young pessimist. We must take things as we find them in this world. You can't reason with your heart. It has its own laws and thumps about things which the intellect scorns. We have permanent habits until we are forty. Then they begin to harden. Presently they petrify. Then business begins. We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it, and stop there. When in doubt, tell the truth. It will confound your enemies and astound your friends. Our opinions do not really blossom into fruition until we have expressed them to someone else. Truth is the most valuable thing we have. Let us economize it. Life does not consist mainly, or even largely, of facts or happenings. It consists mainly of the storm of thoughts that is forever flowing through one's head. A man is never more truthful than when he acknowledges himself a liar. The exquisitely bad is as satisfying to the soul as the exquisitely good. Only the mediocre is unendurable. No real gentleman will tell the naked truth in the presence of the ladies. Honesty is the best policy when there is money in it. Some people lie when they tell the truth. Lying. The secret of success is making your vocation your vacation. As by the fire of experience, so by commission of crime, you learn real morals. I never could tell a lie that anyone would doubt, nor a truth that anyone would believe. A lie can travel halfway around the world, while the truth is putting its shoes on. Be good, and you will be lonesome. Find a job you enjoy doing. You will never have to work a day in your life. It is the little conveniences that make the real comfort of life. The exercise of an extraordinary gift is the supremest pleasure in life. To believe yourself brave is to be brave. You cannot surprise an individual more than twice with the same marvel. There are people who can do all fine and heroic things, but one keep from telling their happiness to the unhappy. Additional problems are the offspring of poor solutions. Against the assault of laughter, nothing can stand. The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter. It's the difference between the lightning bug and it is human to exaggerate the merits of the dead. The man with a new idea is a crank until the idea succeeds. Take any type of woman, and you will find in it something to respect, something to admire, something to love. A baby is an inestimable blessing and bother. Reality can be beaten with enough immen- Sanity and happiness are an impossible combination. Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it. Whoever is happy will make others happy too. Thunder is good. Thunder is impressive. But it is the lightning that does the work. Unexpected money is a delight. The same sum is a bitterness when you expect more. The weakest of all weak things is a virtue which has not been tested in the fire. But it seems to be the law of human constitution that those that deserve shall not have, and those that do not deserve shall get everything that is worth having. Laws control the lesser man. Right conduct controls the greater. We can't reach old age by another man's roads that protect my life, but they would assassinate you. There are two times in a man's life when he should not speculate, when he can't afford it, and when he can. Grief can take care of itself, but to get full value of a joy, you must have somebody to divide it with. It is better to deserve honors and not have them than to have them and not deserve them. A truth is not hard to kill. A lie told well is immortal. Patriot. The person who can holler the loudest without knowing what he is hollering about. I have never let my schooling interfere with my education. Thousands of geniuses live and die undiscovered, either by themselves or by others. All say, how hard is it that we have to die? A strange complaint coming from the mouths of people who have had to live. We are always more anxious to be distinguished for a talent which we do not possess, than to be praised for the fifteen which we do possess. Continued improvement is better than delayed perfection. 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. Never tell the truth to people who are not worthy of it. The full belly is little worth where the mind is starved. I have found out that there ain't no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than to travel with them. The nation is divided, half patriots and half traitors, and no man can tell which from which. An old person should never share three things about himself, his illnesses, for the world has its own, his troubles, for they are often trivial to others, and his wealth, for envy is a sharper blade than a pauper's knife. Necessity is the mother of taking chances. The ability to find solutions to life's challenges is what makes us grow as a person. Human pride is not worthwhile. There is always something lying in wait to take the wind out of it. The best way to cheer yourself up is to try to cheer somebody else up. Good breeding consists in concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of the other person. A wise man silently cuts off three types of people, those who borrow and never return, those who promise and never deliver, and those who listen but never hear. To be busy is man's only happiness. Good friends, good books, and a sleepy conscience, this is the ideal life. I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened. If you like to avoid people after forty, it's a sign that you have discovered the finest luxury of age, freedom from needless company. The more attractive a woman after forty, the more she is likely to fool you twice, first with her looks, then with her brains. When a woman is using you, she will tell you three sweet lies, that her heart is simple, her ways are honest, and her soul is pure. Any man who believes it has mistaken theater for church. Forgiving people in silence and never speaking to them again is a sign of self-respect, for even fools deserve no second audience.