"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that 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."
— Mark Twain

"And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom."
— Anaïs Nin

"Wrinkles should merely indicate where the smiles have been."
— Mark Twain

"The amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigour, and moral courage which it contained. That so few now dare to eccentric, marks the chief danger of the time. "
— John Stuart Mill (On Liberty)

"Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect."
— Mark Twain

"In a world in which there is so much to interest, so much to enjoy, and so much also to correct and improve, everyone who has this moderate amount of moral and intellectual requisites is capable of an existence which may be called enviable; and unless such a person, through bad laws, or subjection to the will of others, is denied the liberty to use the sources of happiness within his reach, he will not fail to find the enviable existence"
— John Stuart Mill

"If only we'd stop trying to be happy, we could have a pretty good time."
— Edith Wharton

"She had been bored all afternoon by Percy Gryce... but she could not ignore him on the morrow, she must follow up her success, must submit to more boredom, must be ready with fresh compliances and adaptibilities, and all on the bare chance that he might ultimately decide to do her the honour of boring her for life."
— Edith Wharton (The House of Mirth)

"Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it."
— Mark Twain

"You believe in a book that has talking animals, wizards, witches, demons, sticks turning into snakes, burning bushes, food falling from the sky, people walking on water, and all sorts of magical, absurd and primitive stories, and you say that we are the ones that need help?"
— Mark Twain

"Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime."
— Mark Twain (The Innocents Abroad/Roughing It)

"A banker is a fellow who lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining, but wants it back the minute it begins to rain."
— Mark Twain

"We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are."
— Anaïs Nin

"Although it is not true that all conservatives are stupid people, it is true that most stupid people are conservative."
— John Stuart Mill