"Boldness is ever blind, for it sees not dangers and inconveniences whence it is bad in council though good in execution."

Bacon, Francis on boldness   

"If we begin with certainties, we shall end in doubts; but if we begin with doubts, and are patient in them, we shall end in certainties."

Bacon, Francis on certainty
4 fans of this quote   

"If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts, but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties."

Bacon, Francis on certainty
3 fans of this quote   

"Therefore if a man look sharply and attentively, he shall see Fortune; for though she be blind, yet she is not invisible."

Bacon, Francis on fortune
3 fans of this quote   

"This is certain, that a man that studieth revenge keeps his wounds green, which otherwise would heal and do well."

Bacon, Francis on forgiveness
11 fans of this quote   

"The best part of beauty is that which no picture can express."

Bacon, Francis on beauty
11 fans of this quote   

"What is the most rigorous law of our being? Growth. No smallest atom of our moral, mental, or physical structure can stand still a year. It grows -- it must grow; nothing can prevent it."

Twain, Mark on growth
7 fans of this quote   

"Happiness ain't a thing in itself --it's only a contrast with something that ain't pleasant. And so, as soon as the novelty is over and the force of the contrast dulled, it ain't happiness any longer, and you have to get something fresh."

Twain, Mark on happiness
9 fans of this quote   

"Heaven goes by favor; if it went by merit, you would stay out and your dog would go in."

Twain, Mark on heaven
10 fans of this quote   

"History is strewn thick with evidence that a truth is not hard to kill, but a lie, well told, is immortal."

Twain, Mark on history and historians
18 fans of this quote   

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

Twain, Mark on honor
8 fans of this quote   

"Man is a creature made at the end of the week's work when God was tired."

Twain, Mark on humankind
8 fans of this quote   

"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."

Twain, Mark on ignorance
14 fans of this quote   

"It isn't safe to sit in judgment upon another person's illusion when you are not on the inside. While you are thinking it is a dream, he may be knowing it is a planet."

Twain, Mark on illusion   

"You cannot depend on your judgments when your imagination is out of focus."

Twain, Mark on imagination
5 fans of this quote   

"If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you; that is the principal difference between a dog and a man."

Twain, Mark on gratitude
21 fans of this quote   

"It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress."

Twain, Mark on government
5 fans of this quote   

"We are always too busy for our children; we never give them the time or interest they deserve. We lavish gifts upon them; but the most precious gift, our personal association, which means so much to them, we give grudgingly."

Twain, Mark on family
15 fans of this quote   

"I was young and foolish then; now I am old and foolisher."

Twain, Mark on fools and foolishness
30 fans of this quote   

"Grief can take care of itself; but to get the full value of a joy you must have somebody to divide it with."

Twain, Mark on friends and friendship
20 fans of this quote   

"The holy passion of friendship is of so sweet and steady and loyal and enduring a nature that it will last through a whole lifetime, if not asked to lend money."

Twain, Mark on friends and friendship
6 fans of this quote   

"Thousands of geniuses live and die undiscovered -- either by themselves or by others."

Twain, Mark on genius
22 fans of this quote   

"I am admonished in many ways that time is pushing me inexorably along. I am approaching the threshold of age; in 1977 I shall be 142. This is no time to be flitting about the earth. I must cease from the activities proper to youth and begin to take on the dignities and gravities and inertia proper to that season of honorable senility which is on its way."

Twain, Mark on age and aging   

"Methuselah lived to be 969 years old . You boys and girls will see more in the next fifty years than Methuselah saw in his whole lifetime."

Twain, Mark on age and aging
12 fans of this quote   

"Keep away from small 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."

Twain, Mark on ambition
24 fans of this quote   

"It was wonderful to find America, but it would have been more wonderful to miss it."

Twain, Mark on america
4 fans of this quote   

"Apparently there is nothing that cannot happen today."

Twain, Mark on impossibility
5 fans of this quote   

"The fact that man knows right from wrong proves his intellectual superiority to the other creatures; but the fact that he can do wrong proves his moral inferiority to any creatures that cannot."

Twain, Mark on intelligence and intellectuals
7 fans of this quote   

"Accident is the name of the greatest of all inventors."

Twain, Mark on invention and inventor
6 fans of this quote   

"The man who does not read books has no advantage over the man that can not read them."

Twain, Mark on books - reading
17 fans of this quote   

"Public opinion is held in reverence. It settles everything. Some think it is the voice of God."

Twain, Mark on opinions
3 fans of this quote   

"The man who is a pessimist before 48 knows too much; if he is an optimist after it, he knows too little."

Twain, Mark on optimism
5 fans of this quote   

"What a good thing Adam had. When he said a good thing, he knew nobody had said it before."

Twain, Mark on plagiarism
3 fans of this quote   

"To do something, say something, see something, before anybody else -- these are things that confer a pleasure compared with which other pleasures are tame and commonplace, other ecstasies cheap and trivial."

Twain, Mark on precedents   

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

Twain, Mark on cheerfulness
9 fans of this quote   

"I know all those people. I have friendly, social, and criminal relations with the whole lot of them."

Twain, Mark on taxes and taxation
3 fans of this quote   

"The right word may be effective, but no word was ever as effective as a rightly timed pause."

Twain, Mark on words
5 fans of this quote   

"It is not best that we should all think alike; it is a difference of opinion that makes horse races."

Twain, Mark on opinions
4 fans of this quote   

"Obscurity and competence: That is the life that is worth living."

Twain, Mark on obscurity
3 fans of this quote   

"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."

Twain, Mark on losers and losing
8 fans of this quote