"The greatest act of faith is when a man understands he is not God."

Holmes, Oliver Wendell on faith
13 fans of this quote   

"A homely face and no figure have aided many women heavenward."

Antrim, Minna on virtue   

"Man forgives women anything save the wit to outwit him."

Antrim, Minna on women
7 fans of this quote   

"When a woman is very, very bad, she is awful, but when a man is correspondingly good, he is weird."

Antrim, Minna on women
5 fans of this quote   

"An epigram is a flashlight of a truth; a witticism, truth laughing at itself."

Antrim, Minna on aphorisms and epigrams
4 fans of this quote   

"The Green-eyed Monster causes much woe, but the absence of this ugly serpent argues the presence of a corpse whose name is Eros."

Antrim, Minna on jealousy
3 fans of this quote   

"Between flattery and admiration there often flows a river of contempt."

Antrim, Minna on flattery   

"Experience is a good teacher, but she sends in terrific bills."

Antrim, Minna on experience
6 fans of this quote   

"The world is always ready to receive talent with open arms. Very often it does not know what to do with genius."

Holmes, Oliver Wendell on genius
3 fans of this quote   

"Don't flatter yourself that friendship authorizes you to say disagreeable things to your intimates. The nearer you come into relation with a person, the more necessary do tact and courtesy become."

Holmes, Oliver Wendell on friends and friendship
5 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   

"There is a great deal of human nature in people."

Twain, Mark on nature
6 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   

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

Twain, Mark on humor
9 fans of this quote   

"Humor must not professedly teach and it must not professedly preach, but it must do both if it would live forever."

Twain, Mark on humor   

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

Twain, Mark on health
10 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   

"Habit is habit, and not to be flung out of the window by any man, but coaxed downstairs a step at a time."

Twain, Mark on habit
5 fans of this quote   

"A habit cannot be tossed out the window; it must be coaxed down the stairs a step at a time."

Twain, Mark on habit
7 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   

"Damn the subjunctive. It brings all our writers to shame."

Twain, Mark on grammar
3 fans of this quote   

"We have the best government that money can buy."

Twain, Mark on government
6 fans of this quote   

"Good breeding consists in concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of the other person."

Twain, Mark on ancestry
5 fans of this quote   

"A crank is someone with a new idea -- until it catches on."

Twain, Mark on ideas   

"In the first place God made idiots. This was for practice. Then he made School Boards."

Twain, Mark on idiots
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   

"Of all the possessions of this life fame is the noblest; when the body has sunk into the dust the great name still lives."

Schiller, Johann Friedrich Von on fame   

"Happy he who learns to bear what he cannot change."

Schiller, Johann Friedrich Von on endurance
7 fans of this quote   

"That which is so universal as death must be a benefit."

Schiller, Johann Friedrich Von on death
3 fans of this quote   

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

Twain, Mark on knowledge
16 fans of this quote   

"The trouble with the world is not that people know too little, but that they know so many things that ain't so."

Twain, Mark on knowledge
10 fans of this quote   

"We have not the reverent feeling for the rainbow that a savage has, because we know how it is made. We have lost as much as we gained by prying into that matter."

Twain, Mark on knowledge
4 fans of this quote   

"In the real world, nothing happens at the right place at the right time. It is the job of journalists and historians to correct that."

Twain, Mark on journalism and journalists
6 fans of this quote   

"True irreverence is disrespect for another man's god."

Twain, Mark on irreverence
5 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 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   

"Monarchies, aristocracies, and religions are all based upon that large defect in your race -- the individual's distrust of his neighbor, and his desire, for safety's or comfort's sake, to stand well in his neighbor's eye. These institutions will always remain, and always flourish, and always oppress you, affront you, and degrade you, because you will always be and remain slaves of minorities. There was never a country where the majority of the people were in their secret hearts loyal to any of these institutions."

Twain, Mark on institutions   

"When we remember that we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained."

Twain, Mark on insanity
10 fans of this quote   

"Let us consider that we are all partially insane. It will explain us to each other; it will unriddle many riddles; it will make clear and simple many things which are involved in haunting and harassing difficulties and obscurities now."

Twain, Mark on insanity
9 fans of this quote