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

I haven’t got as much money as some folks, but I’ve got as much impudence as any of them, and that’s the next thing to money.

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

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

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

There are two kinds of fools: those who can’t change their opinions and those who won’t.

It is a very delicate job to forgive a man, without lowering him in his own estimation, and yours too.

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

Genius ain’t anything more than elegant common sense.

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

Money will buy a pretty good dog, but it won’t buy the wag of his tail.

Flattery is like cologne water, to be smelt, not swallowed.

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

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

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

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

There are two things in life for which we are never truly prepared: twins.

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

Most people repent their sins by thanking God they ain’t so wicked as their neighbors.

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

Learning sleeps and snores in libraries, but wisdom is everywhere, wide awake, on tiptoe.

The trouble with people is not that they don’t know but that they know so much that ain’t so.

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

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.

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

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

About the only difference between the poor and the rich, is this, the poor suffer misery, while the rich have to enjoy it.

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

The best way to convince a fool that he is wrong is to let him have his own way.

Laughter is the sensation of feeling good all over and showing it principally in one place.

It’s not only the most difficult thing to know one’s self, but the most inconvenient.

It is better to know nothing than to know what ain’t so.

As scarce as truth is, the supply has always been in excess of the demand.

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

There are some people so addicted to exaggeration that they can’t tell the truth without lying.

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

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.

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

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

Life consists not in holding good cards but in playing those you hold well.

Woman’s influence is powerful, especially when she wants something.

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

The wheel that squeaks the loudest is the one that gets the grease.

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

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

Old maids sweeten their tea with scandal.

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

Remember the poor, it costs nothing.

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

Love looks through a telescope; envy, through a microscope.

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

There is no revenge so complete as forgiveness.

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

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

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.

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

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.

It ain’t often that a man’s reputation outlasts his money.

There is nothing so easy to learn as experience and nothing so hard to apply.

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

Marrying for love may be a bit risky, but it is so honest that God can’t help but smile on it.

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

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

A dog is the only thing on earth that loves you more than you love yourself.

I have never known a person to live to be one hundred and be remarkable for anything else.

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

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

Reason often makes mistakes, but conscience never does.

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

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

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

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.

Be like a postage stamp. Stick to one thing until you get there.

Silence is one of the hardest arguments to refute.

Wisdom has never made a bigot, but learning has.

No one can disgrace us but ourselves.

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.

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

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

There are lots of people who mistake their imagination for their memory.