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.

The trouble is not in dying for a friend, but in finding a friend worth dying for.

Give every day the chance to become the most beautiful day of your life.

Never allow someone to be your priority while allowing yourself to be their option.

I must have a prodigious quantity of mind; it takes me as much as a week sometimes to make it up.

The lack of money is the root of all evil.

Don't let schooling interfere with your education.

Loyalty to petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul.

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

A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way.

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

Denial ain't just a river in Egypt.

I can live for two months on a good compliment.

If I had read as many books as other people, I would know as little.

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So, throw off the bowlines, sail away from safe harbor, catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore, Dream, Discover.

Worrying is like paying a debt you don't owe.

If you tell the truth you do not need a good memory!

To succeed in life, you need two things: ignorance and confidence.

The dog is a gentleman; I hope to go to his heaven not man's.

In the first place, God made idiots. That was for practice. Then he made school boards.

Never put off till tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow.

A person who won't read has no advantage over one who can't read.

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

There are lies, damned lies and statistics.

A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval.

Wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been.

Lord save us all from old age and broken health and a hope tree that has lost the faculty of putting out blossoms.

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

Continuous improvement is better than delayed perfection.

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

The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.

It's easier to fool people than it is to convince them they've been fooled.

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do.

I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.

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.

Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't.

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

Life would be infinitely happier if we could only be born at the age of eighty and gradually approach eighteen.

There are basically two types of people. People who accomplish things, and people who claim to have accomplished things. The first group is less crowded.

It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.

Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company.

If it's your job to eat a frog, it's best to do it first thing in the morning. And If it's your job to eat two frogs, it's best to eat the biggest one first.

You cannot uneducate the person who has learned to read.

The secret of getting ahead is getting started.

Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand.

Wagner's music is better than it sounds.

Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do. Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.

In a good bookroom you feel in some mysterious way that you are absorbing the wisdom contained in all the books through your skin, without even opening them.

I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it.

Action speaks louder than words but not nearly as often.

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.

There is no distinctly American criminal class - except Congress.

Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint.

Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it.

Buy land, they're not making it anymore.

Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear.

The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die anytime.

If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything.

Necessity is the mother of taking chances.

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

The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.

Honesty is the best policy - when there is money in it.

Never pick a fight with people who buy ink by the barrel.

A man's character may be learned from the adjectives which he habitually uses in conversation.

Golf is a good walk spoiled.

All generalizations are false, including this one.

The very ink with which history is written is merely fluid prejudice.

Suppose you were an idiot, and suppose you were a member of Congress; but I repeat myself.

The best way to cheer yourself up is to try to cheer somebody else up.

You can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.

How easy it is to make people believe a lie, and how hard it is to undo that work again.

Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on or by imbeciles who really mean it.

To be good is noble; but to show others how to be good is nobler and no trouble.

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

Life is short, Break the Rules. Forgive quickly, Kiss slowly. Love truly. Laugh uncontrollably And never regret ANYTHING That makes you smile.

When people do not respect us we are sharply offended; yet in his private heart no man much respects himself.

It ain't those parts of the Bible that I can't understand that bother me, it is the parts that I do understand.

Climate is what we expect, weather is what we get.

Facts are stubborn, but statistics are more pliable.

Giving up smoking is the easiest thing in the world. I know because I've done it thousands of times.

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

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.

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

My mother had a great deal of trouble with me, but I think she enjoyed it.

Never put off till tomorrow what may be done day after tomorrow just as well.

Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.

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

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

In the beginning of a change the patriot is a scarce man, and brave, and hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a patriot.

Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see.

Do the right thing. It will gratify some people and astonish the rest.

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

Cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education.

We have the best government that money can buy.

Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don't mind, it doesn't matter.

Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.

Do the thing you fear most and the death of fear is certain.

In the Spring, I have counted 136 different kinds of weather inside of 24 hours.

Comparison is the death of joy.

Good friends, good books, and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.