Quotes by Mark Twain

How little a thing can make us happy when we feel that we have earned it.
(The Diaries of Adam and Eve)

Laws are sand, customs are rock. Laws can be evaded and punishment escaped but an openly transgressed custom brings sure punishment.
(The Gorky Incident)

[Humanity] has unquestionably one really effective weapon
Laughter. Power, money, persuasion, supplication, persecution. These can lift at a colossal humbug push it a little weaken it a little, century by century; but only laughter can blow it to rags and atoms at a blast. Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand.
(The Mysterious Stranger, chapter 10 [1916])

I am not one of those who in expressing opinions confine themselves to facts.
(Wearing White Clothes speech, 1907)

The fact that man knows right from wrong proves his intellectual superiority to other creatures; but the fact that he can do wrong proves his moral inferiority to any creature that cannot.
(What Is Man? , 1906)