Adversity has the same effect on a man that severe training has on the pugilist: it reduces him to his fighting weight.

One of the greatest victories you can gain over someone is to beat him at politeness.

The best time for you to hold your tongue is the time you feel you must say something or bust.

Reason often makes mistakes, but conscience never does.

There's a great power in words, if you don't hitch too many of them together.

Common sense is instinct, and enough of it is genius.

Common sense is the knack of seeing things as they are, and doing things as they ought to be done.

Every man has his follies - and often they are the most interesting thing he has got.

Life is short, but it's long enough to ruin any man who wants to be ruined.

The thinner the ice, the more anxious is everyone to see whether it will bear.

Knowledge is like money: the more he gets, the more he craves.

Words are often seen hunting for an idea, but ideas are never seen hunting for words.

One of the rarest things that a man ever does, is to do the best he can.

Threescore years and ten is enough; if a man can't suffer all the misery he wants in that time, he must be numb.

Half of the troubles of this life can be traced to saying yes too quickly and not saying no soon enough.

As a general thing, when a woman wears the pants in a family, she has a good right to them.

In youth we run into difficulties. In old age difficulties run into us.

Advice is like castor oil, easy enough to give but dreadful uneasy to take.

Take all the fools out of this world and there wouldn't be any fun living in it, or profit.

Time is like money, the less we have of it to spare the further we make it go.

Man was created a little lower than the angels and has been getting a little lower ever since.

When a man comes to me for advice, I find out the kind of advice he wants, and I give it to him.

I think when the full horror of being fifty hits you, you should stay home and have a good cry.

To bring up a child in the way he should go, travel that way yourself once in a while.

Old maids sweeten their tea with scandal.

No one can disgrace us but ourselves.

A puppy plays with every pup he meets, but an old dog has few associates.

There is no greater evidence of superior intelligence than to be surprised at nothing.

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.

If a man should happen to reach perfection in this world, he would have to die immediately to enjoy himself.

If there was no faith there would be no living in this world. We could not even eat hash with any safety.

The best medicine I know for rheumatism is to thank the Lord that it ain't gout.

Most people when they come to you for advice, come to have their own opinions strengthened, not corrected.

Don't ever prophesy; for if you prophesy wrong, nobody will forget it; and if you prophesy right, nobody will remember it.

Genius ain't anything more than elegant common sense.

A good way I know to find happiness, is to not bore a hole to fit the plug.

Be kind to your mother-in-law, but pay for her board at some good hotel.

There are people who are always anticipating trouble, and in this way they manage to enjoy many sorrows that never really happen to them.

It is much easier to repent of sins that we have committed than to repent of those that we intend to commit.

Confess your sins to the Lord and you will be forgiven; confess them to man and you will be laughed at.

One of the best temporary cures for pride and affectation is seasickness; a man who wants to vomit never puts on airs.

About the most originality that any writer can hope to achieve honestly is to steal with good judgment.

Remember the poor, it costs nothing.

Men mourn for what they have lost; women for what they ain't got.

Wisdom has never made a bigot, but learning has.

The road to ruin is always in good repair, and the travellers pay the expense of it.

The man whose only pleasure in life is making money, weighs less on the moral scale than an angleworm.

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.

Love is said to be blind, but I know some fellows in love who can see twice as much in their sweethearts as I do.

Economy is a savings-bank, into which men drop pennies, and get dollars in return.