Don't part with your illusions. When they are gone you may still exist, but you have ceased to live.
Mark Twain, born Samuel Clemens (1835–1910), was an American writer and humourist, author of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. He took his pen name from Mississippi river slang, having worked as a steamboat pilot. Alongside the novels he wrote travel books and sharp satire on the politics and society of his day.
About this theme: Life
Life is the broadest theme in any collection of quotations and therefore the most uneven. The same heading holds Seneca's letter on the shortness of time and a sentence from a greetings card. The difference usually comes down to whether a line asks something of the reader or flatters them.
More by Mark Twain
- When in doubt, tell the truth.
- Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear — not absence of fear.
- Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest.
- Habit is habit, and not to be flung out of the window by any man, but coaxed downstairs a step at a time.
- The best way to cheer yourself up is to try to cheer somebody else up.
More on Life
- The unexamined life is not worth living.— Socrates
- It is not the length of life, but the depth of life.— Ralph Waldo Emerson
- True life is lived when tiny changes occur.— Leo Tolstoy
- Dwell on the beauty of life. Watch the stars, and see yourself running with them.— Marcus Aurelius
- To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.— Oscar Wilde