There are two things in life for which we are never truly prepared: twins.
— Josh Billings
There's a great power in words, if you don't hitch too many of them together.
I have lived in this world just long enough to look carefully the second time into things that I am most certain of the first time.
Reason often makes mistakes, but conscience never does.
In youth we run into difficulties. In old age difficulties run into us.
Economy is a savings-bank, into which men drop pennies, and get dollars in return.
To bring up a child in the way he should go, travel that way yourself once in a while.
Love looks through a telescope; envy, through a microscope.
Honesty is the rarest wealth anyone can possess, and yet all the honesty in the world ain't lawful tender for a loaf of bread.
When a man comes to me for advice, I find out the kind of advice he wants, and I give it to him.
Every man has his follies - and often they are the most interesting thing he has got.
Common sense is the knack of seeing things as they are, and doing things as they ought to be done.
Knowledge is like money: the more he gets, the more he craves.
About the most originality that any writer can hope to achieve honestly is to steal with good judgment.
It is not all bad, this getting old, ripening. After the fruit has got its growth it should juice up and mellow. God forbid I should live long enough to ferment and rot and fall to the ground in a squash.
Words are often seen hunting for an idea, but ideas are never seen hunting for words.
You'd better not know so much, than to know so many things that ain't so.
Marrying for love may be a bit risky, but it is so honest that God can't help but smile on it.
Genius ain't anything more than elegant common sense.
There's a lot of people in this world who spend so much time watching their health that they haven't the time to enjoy it.
Adversity has the same effect on a man that severe training has on the pugilist: it reduces him to his fighting weight.
Silence is one of the hardest arguments to refute.
Advice is like castor oil, easy enough to give but dreadful uneasy to take.
The wheel that squeaks the loudest is the one that gets the grease.
There is no revenge so complete as forgiveness.
I think when the full horror of being fifty hits you, you should stay home and have a good cry.
The best medicine I know for rheumatism is to thank the Lord that it ain't gout.
Learning sleeps and snores in libraries, but wisdom is everywhere, wide awake, on tiptoe.
Laughter is the sensation of feeling good all over and showing it principally in one place.
The trouble with people is not that they don't know but that they know so much that ain't so.
If you ever find happiness by hunting for it, you will find it, as the old woman did her lost spectacles, safe on her own nose all the time.
As scarce as truth is, the supply has always been in excess of the demand.
There are lots of people who mistake their imagination for their memory.
