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'''[[w:Mark Twain|Samuel Langhorne Clemens]]''' ([[November 30]], [[1835]] – [[April 21]], [[1910]]), known as '''Mark Twain''', was an American humorist, novelist, writer, and lecturer.
:'''''See also:'''''
::'''''[[Life on the Mississippi]]'''''
::'''''[[Pudd'nhead Wilson]]'''''
::'''''[[The Prince and the Pauper]]'''''
::'''''[[A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court]]'''''
::'''''[[The Adventures of Tom Sawyer]]'''''
::'''''[[Adventures of Huckleberry Finn]]'''''
::'''''[[Following the Equator]]'''''
== Quotes ==
[[File:Darkness Over Eden 2709.jpg |thumb|right|Truth is the most valuable thing we have. Let us economize it.]]
* I haven't a particle of confidence in a man who has no redeeming petty vices whatsoever.
** "Answers to Correspondents", ''[[w:The Californian (1860s newspaper)|The Californian]]'', 17 June 1865.<!--ref ''Early Tales & Sketches, v.2, 1864-1865'', Branch and Hirst, ed. (1981) http://books.google.com/books?id=oK3HrsDGYmUC&pg=PA187 --> Anthologized in ''[http://books.google.com/books?id=kqMDAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA35 The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, and Other Sketches]'' (1867)
* I'll risk forty dollars that he can outjump any frog in Calaveras county.
** "[[w:The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County|The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County]]"; first published as "Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog" in the ''[[w:New York Saturday Press|New York Saturday Press]]'', 18 November 1865; revised by the author and reprinted the following month in ''[[w:The Californian (1860s newspaper)|The Californian]]''
* I don't see no p'ints about that frog that's any better'n any other frog.
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** "The Undertaker's Chat", first published as "A Reminiscence of the Back Settlements" in ''[[w:Galaxy Magazine (1866)|The Galaxy]]'', Vol. 10, No. 5, November 1870[http://books.google.com/books?id=2TIZAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA731]. Anthologized in ''[http://books.google.com/books?id=5LcIAAAAQAAJ Mark Twain's Sketches, New and Old]'' (1875)
*"It has become a sarcastic proverb that a thing must be true if you saw it in a newspaper. That is the opinion intelligent people have of that lying vehicle in a nutshell. But the trouble is that the stupid people–who constitute the grand overwhelming majority of this and all other nations–do believe and are moulded and convinced by what they get out of a newspaper, and there is where the harm lies."...
**
* A baby is an inestimable blessing and bother.
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** Letter to William Dean Howells, 27 February 1885, in Albert Bigelow Paine, ''Mark Twain's letters: Arranged with Comment'' (1917), Vol. 2, [http://books.google.com/books?id=4KZhv9y8sMIC&pg=PA450&lpg=PA450 p. 450]
* I was convinced that [[Lake Como]] was a large basin of water similar to the Tahoe, also surrounded by immense mountains whose slopes reach the shores, but here the lake is not a basin, since the banks are articulated like those of a stream and is a quarter or two thirds wide of the Mississippi. Along the coast there is not a single strip of flat land, but endless chains of mountains which suddenly emerge from the lake surface and rise towards the sky for one hundred or two hundred feet, constantly varying in shape. The rocky ridges are covered with numerous plant species and dotted with white villas that peek through lush foliage. Even on the top of the promontory we saw pretty little houses perched on picturesque pinnacles, more than a thousand feet above our heads.
** [[w:Mark Twain|Mark Twain]], "The innocents abroad", New York, 1896
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***** ''Josh Billings' Old Farmer's Allminax'', [http://books.google.com/books?id=sUI1AAAAMAAJ&pg=PT30 "January 1871"]. Also in ''Everybody's Friend, or; Josh Billing's Encyclopedia and Proverbial Philosophy of Wit and Humor'' (1874), [http://books.google.com/books?id=7rA8AAAAYAAJ&pg=PA304 p. 304]
* The other night the view appeared even more surprising and picturesque. On the other side (of [[Lake Como]]) cliffs, trees and very white houses reflected their perfectly clear images on the lake and long beams of light, coming from distant windows, marked the motionless surface. Immediately next to it, great silver mansions under the moon shone among a thick dark and shapeless foliage, among the shadows that fell from the top of the cliffs and touched the lake edge where every stretch of the magical vision was reflected several times and with precision.
** [[w:Mark Twain|Mark Twain]], Cites in ''The innocents abroad'', John Camden Hotten, Londra, 1872
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*** White subsequently reported this in "Mark Twain Amused," ''New York Journal'', 2 June 1897. White also recounts the incident in "Mark Twain as a Newspaper Reporter," ''The Outlook'', Vol. 96, 24 December 1910
** ''Variant'': I said - 'Say the report is greatly exaggerated'.
*** "Chapters from My Autobiography", ''The North American Review'', 21 September 1906, p. 160. Mark Twain
** ''Misquote'': The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.
*** Note: This paraphrase or misquote may be more popular than the original. <!--The joke is not original to Twain, having been used by [[Ulysses S. Grant]] in 1865.{{failed verification}}-->
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* Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please.
** As quoted in [
** Commonly paraphrased as: "First get your facts, then you can distort them at your leisure."
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* We believe that out of the public school grows the greatness of a nation.
** Address at a meeting of the Berkeley Lyceum, New York, November 23, 1900.
* The silent colossal National Lie that is the support and confederate of all the tyrannies and shams and inequalities and unfairnesses that afflict the peoples — that is the one to throw bricks and sermons at.
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** [http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/53b4cf90-7739-0132-f12c-58d385a7b928 Letter to Gertrude Natkin, 2 March 1906]
*The glory which is built upon a lie soon becomes a most unpleasant incumbrance. ...
** Autobiographical dictation, 2 December 1906. Published in Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 2 (University of California Press, 2013)
* If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man.
** ''[https://www.gutenberg.org/files/102/102-h/102-h.htm#link2HCH0016 The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson]'' (1894), p. 214.
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:Wiederherstellungsbestrebungen.
:Waffenstillstandsunterhandlungen.<br />Of course when one of these grand mountain ranges goes stretching across the printed page, it adorns and ennobles that literary landscape,—but at the same time it is a great distress to the new student, for it blocks up his way; he cannot crawl under it, or climb over it or tunnel through it. So he resorts to the dictionary for help; but there is no help there. The dictionary must draw the line somewhere,—so it leaves this sort of words out. And it is right, because these long things are hardly legitimate words, but are rather combinations of words, and the inventor of them ought to have been killed.
*In German, a young lady has no sex, while a turnip has.
:*Appendix D, [http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Awful_German_Language The Awful German Language]
=== ''[[w:Adventures of Huckleberry Finn|Adventures of Huckleberry Finn]]'' (1885) ===
{{Main|Adventures of Huckleberry Finn}}
* Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.<br>BY ORDER OF THE AUTHOR.
** Notice
*
** Ch. 1
* Jim was most ruined for a servant, because he got stuck up on account of having seen the devil and been rode by witches.
** Ch. 2
* There warn't anybody at the church, except maybe a hog or two, for there warn't any lock on the door, and hogs likes a puncheon floor in summer-time because it's cool. If you notice, most folks don't go to church only when they've got to; but a hog is different.
** Ch. 18
* To be, or not to be; that is the bare bodkin.
** Ch. 21
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** Ch. 26
* I was a-trembling, because I'd got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself, "All right, then, I'll
** Ch. 31
*
** Ch. 43
=== ''Letter to Clara Spaulding'' (20 August 1886) ===
*There isn't time--so brief is life--for bickerings, apologies, heartburnings, callings to account.
=== ''[[w:A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court|A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court]]'' (1889) ===
{{Main|A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court}}
[[File:Connecticut Yankee4 new.jpg|thumb|You can't depend on your eyes when your [[imagination]] is out of focus.]]
* Many a small thing has been made large by the right kind of advertising.
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* Whenever the literary German dives into a sentence, that is the last you are going to see of him till he emerges on the other side of his Atlantic with his verb in his mouth.
** Ch. 22
* You can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.
** Ch. 43
=== ''How To Tell A Story'' (1895) ===
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=== ''[[w:Following the Equator|Following the Equator]]'' (1897) ===
{{Main|Following the Equator}}
* When in doubt, tell the truth.
** Ch. 2, Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar.
* Prosperity is the best protector of principle.
** Ch. 38, Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar.
=== "Which was the Dream?" (1898) ===
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* Nature knows no indecencies; man invents them.
* Love seems the swiftest, but it is the slowest of all growths. No man or woman really knows what perfect love is until they have been married a quarter of a century.
* Death, the only immortal who treats us all alike, whose pity and whose peace and whose refuge are for all — the soiled and the pure, the rich and the poor, the loved and the unloved.
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** p. 393
* Not a single right is indestructible: a new might can at any time abolish it, hence, man possesses not a single ''permanent'' right. <br>
** p. 394
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*...now...that I am a wise person. As for me, I wish there were some more of us in the world, for I find it lonesome.
**p. 281
* In 1847... the conversation fell upon Virginia and old times. I was present, but the group were probably quite unconscious of me, I being a lad and a negligeable quantity. Two of the group... had been of the audience when the [[w:Richmond, Virginia#Early United States|Richmond]] theatre burned down thirty-six years before, and they talked over the frightful details... and with their eyes I saw it all with an intolerable vividness... The picture is before me yet, and can never fade. ...[T]hree or four years later... I was king-bee and sole "subject" in the [[wikt:mesmerism#Noun|mesmeric]] show... I was trying to invent something fresh in the way of a vision... The vision developed by degrees, and gathered swing, momentum, energy! It was the Richmond fire. ...the fact stood proven that I had seen it in my vision. Lawks!<br />It is curious. When the magician's engagement closed there was but one person in the village who did not believe in mesmerism, and I was the one. All the others were converted, but I was to remain an implacable and unpersuadable disbeliever in mesmerism and hypnotism for close upon fifty years.
**pp. 301-302
* Thirty-five years after those old exploits... I visited my old mother; and being moved by what seemed... a rather heroic and noble impulse I thought I would... confess my ancient fault. ...To my astonishment... she was not moved in the least degree; she simply did not believe me...
**p. 302
* How easy it is to make people believe a lie, and how hard it is to undo that work again!
**p. 302
*** ''Misquote'':
*Carlyle said "a lie cannot live." It shows that he did not know how to tell them. If I had taken out a life policy on this one the premiums would have bankrupted me ages ago.
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** While this quote does appear in Twain's posthumous ''The Refuge of the Derelicts'' (1905), it had previously been published elsewhere.
** The earliest citation found in Google Books is a 1872 article by [[w:Richard Rogers Bowker|Richard Bowker]]: [https://books.google.com/books?id=YZgBAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA68&dq=The+lack+of+money+is+the+root+of+all+evil&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjWi5DE1crLAhUI3mMKHeSdB0YQ6AEIKzAB#v=onepage&q=%22lack%20of%20money%22&f=false "Our Crime Against Crimes"], in ''The Herald of Health'', vol. 19 no. 2, New York: Wood & Holbrook, February 1872. The saying is placed within quotation marks, perhaps indicating that it was already well-known.
** A precursor is found in the December 1859 edition of ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=gpdEAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA209&dq=The+lack+of+money+is+the+root+of+all+evil&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjWi5DE1crLAhUI3mMKHeSdB0YQ6AEINTAD#v=onepage&q=%22lack%20of%20gold%22&f=false Household Monthly]'':
*
** [[Anonymous]] American proverb; since 1998 this has often been attributed to Mark Twain on the internet, but no contemporary evidence of him ever using it has been located.
** Variants:
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** Attributed to [[w:Markus Herz|Markus Herz]] by [[w:Ernst, Baron von Feuchtersleben|Ernst von Feuchtersleben]], ''Zur Diätetik der Seele'' (1841), [http://books.google.com/books?id=FLc6AAAAcAAJ&pg=PA95&dq=%22Lieber+Freund+Sie+werden+noch+einmal+an+einem+Druckfehler+sterben%22 p. 95]. First attributed to Twain in 1980s, as in ''The 637 best things anybody ever said'', (1982), Robert Byrne, Atheneum. See [[Talk:Mark_Twain#You_may_die_of_a_misprint|talk page]] for more info.
* When a child turns 12, he should be kept in a barrel and fed through the bunghole, until he reaches 16 ... at which time you plug the bunghole.
** Attributed to Twain but never sourced, this quotation should not be regarded as authentic.
* Describing her first day back in grade school after a long absence, a teacher said, "It was like trying to hold 35 corks under water at the same time."
** Incorrectly attributed to Twain, this is actually a quotation from an article in ''The Pocono Record'' (18 February 1971, [http://www.newspapers.com/newspage/40447792/ page 4])
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* Golf is a good walk spoiled.
** "Twain probably never uttered [these] words," according to R. Kent Rasmussen, editor of ''The Quotable Mark Twain'' (1998).
** "To play golf is to spoil an otherwise enjoyable walk" is found in H.S. Scrivener, [https://books.google.com/books?id=cYgCAAAAYAAJ&q=dicta#v=snippet&q=dicta&f=false "Memories of Men and Meetings"], in Arthur Wallis Myers (ed.) ''Lawn Tennis at Home and Abroad'' New York:Charles Scribner's Sons, 1903, p. 47.
* If voting made any difference, they wouldn't let us do it.
* ''Variant'': If voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal.
** Not by Twain, but from [[w:Philip Berrigan|Philip Berrigan]] and [[w:Emma Goldman|Emma Goldman]].<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/mark-twain-voting-quote/|title='If Voting Made a Difference, They Wouldn't Let Us Do It'|website=[[w:Snopes|Snopes]]|author=Dan Evon |date=May 24, 2016 |access-date=April 14, 2024}}</ref>
* I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time.
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* Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.
** [http://www.bartleby.com/73/1982.html Notes on sourcing]
** Twain did say:
:: "There is a sumptuous variety about the New England weather that compels the stranger's admiration — and regret. The weather is always doing something there ... In the spring I have counted one hundred and thirty-six different kinds of weather inside of four and twenty hours. ...<br>Yes, one of the brightest gems in the New England weather is the dazzling uncertainty of it."
::* Speech at the dinner of New England Society in New York City (22 December 1876)
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**''Variant'': Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason
** Not found in Twain's works.
** A 1993 newspaper humor column attributes this saying to ''Reader's Digest'':
** Also attributed to ''Reader's Digest'' in Naomi Judd's 1993 book [https://books.google.com/books?id=AMmrqZkq3JQC&pg=PA262&dq=%22politicians+are+like+diapers%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiQ2obup6LKAhUBS2MKHfacCmsQ6AEIITAB#v=onepage&q=%22politicians%20are%20like%20diapers%22&f=false ''Love Can Build a Bridge'']:
** Attributed to 1992 congressional candidate [https://marktwainstudies.com/the-apocryphal-twain-politicians-are-like-diapers/ John Wallner]
** Not found attributed to Twain until [https://books.google.com/books?id=gNwqfJkXjVsC&pg=PA448&dq=%22politicians+are+like+diapers%22+twain&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjUq_C6qaLKAhVM7GMKHTuwAfIQ6AEIIzAB#v=onepage&q=%22politicians%20are%20like%20diapers%22%20twain&f=false 2010]
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** Attested at least [https://books.google.ru/books?id=nUpWAAAAYAAJ&q=Ancients&pg=PA32 in 1780] (by [[s:John Hope (1739-1785)|John Hope]]):
*** Now, the Devil confound those Ancients, for they have stolen all my good thoughts from me!
* A good lawyer knows the law; a clever one takes the judge to lunch.
** Attributed to Twain but never sourced, this quotation should not be regarded as authentic.
* History does not repeat itself, but it rhymes
** Attributed to Mark Twain, without evidence. First
* When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years.
** Assessed as a probable misattribution by [[w:Quote Investigator|Quote Investigator]] [https://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/10/10/twain-father]
{{misattributed end}}
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** [[William Faulkner]], "Books and Things: American Drama: Inhibitions", in ''The Missippian'', March 1922
*If the writer is trying to interpret the meaning of life, all of what he writes is autobiographical. Think of Mark Twain, for example. You can tell from Twain's autobiography that Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn are versions, or imagined stages, of Twain himself. He was writing about his own life, about how it was or could have been. And he's still trying to reinterpret his life or to translate it when he is writing his autobiography, only he is not doing it with a mask anymore, rather as a testimony.
**[[Rosario Ferré]] interview in ''Backtalk: Women Writers Speak Out'' by Donna Marie Perry (1993)
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* I am persuaded that the future historian of America will find your works as indispensable to him as a French historian finds the political tracts of Voltaire.
** [[George Bernard Shaw]], letter to Mark Twain (3 July 1907), as quoted in Shelley Fisher Fishkin's Introduction to ''A Historical Guide to Mark Twain'' (Oxford University Press, 2002), p. 3
*Like [[Mark Twain]], [[Eugene Field]] was an ardent dissenter against the prevailing social order in private conversation, although not much of that dissent was found in his writings-nor in Twain's. Both of those men were born too soon, or perhaps were just naturally cautious of being combative in public. They were cast by Fate into a period which we know today as the era of rugged individualism-a nation marching behind a banner bearing the legend: "Self conquers all!" Meaning, of course, that it's up to you alone-a doctrine which practically everybody across the land took for granted, and one which hangs on in spite of its falsity. Yet Field and Twain occasionally exhibited signs of doubt and wrote satirical comment on American life. Field poked fun at the shallow culture of the Chicago pork packers, and Mark Twain indulged in brief outbursts of anarchistic protest. None of their onsets, however, was incisive enough to make the big financiers question their loyalty to the existing economic and social system.
**''[[Art Young]]: His Life and Times'' (1939)
*Mark Twain is a heroic figure in literature, and everybody who studies American literature or American history knows about Mark Twain as a great novelist. But how many people are taught in our schools or in our books that Mark Twain was a leader of the Anti-Imperialist League at the turn of the century? That he spoke out against the invasion of the Philippines?
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*{{commonscat-inline}}
* {{gutenberg author|id=Mark_Twain|name=Mark Twain}}
== Notes ==
{{Reflist}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Twain, Mark}}
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[[Category:People from California]]
[[Category:Journalists from the United States]]
[[Category:
[[Category:Critics from the United States]]
[[Category:Abolitionists]]
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