I’ve always loved Mark Twain’s sense of humor, but then I’m a satirist myself, so I suppose that’s no surprise. So here are some of my favorite Twain quotes, and a few that have made me laugh. I may add to this list later, though, as all my books are still packed away in storage and I don’t have access to them right now.

“Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence in society.”

“If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man.”

“When I find a well-drawn character in fiction or biography I generally take a warm personal interest in him, for the reason that I have known him before–met him on the river.”

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”

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

“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.”

“A person who won’t read has no advantage over one who can’t read.”

“I am dead to adverbs; they cannot excite me. To misplace an adverb is a thing which I am able to do with frozen indifference; it can never give me a pang. … There are subtleties which I cannot master at all, — they confuse me, they mean absolutely nothing to me, — and this adverb plague is one of them. … Yes, there are things which we cannot learn, and there is no use in fretting about it. I cannot learn adverbs; and what is more I won’t.”

“Buy land, they’re not making it anymore.”

“Familiarity breeds contempt – and children.”

“Facts are stubborn things, but statistics are more pliable.”

“Man is the only animal that blushes – or needs to.”

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

“Loyalty to the country always. Loyalty to the government when it deserves it.”

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

“You can’t depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.”

“Wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been.”

“All generalizations are false, including this one.”

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(Both images are in the public domain, but can be found at Wikipedia Commons, if you’re interested.)