Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear - not absence of fear. It is better to deserve honours and not have them than to have them and not to deserve them. It was enough to make a body ashamed of the human race. Good breeding consists in concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of the other person. All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence, and then success is sure.
Truth is more of a stranger than fiction.
A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way. No God and no religion can survive ridicule. No political church, no nobility, no royalty or other fraud, can face ridicule in a fair field, and live. Mark Twain's Notebooks and Journals, vol. I'm glad I did it, partly because it was worth it, but mostly because I shall never have to do it again.