I recently saw a quote from Samuel Langhorne Clemens (a.k.a. Mark Twain) and re-realized just how quick witted and humorous he was and still is. Some people can take words and construct them into the most amazingly beautiful sentences. With just a few short words, they can, with razor sharp efficiency, write what would take me pages and ages to produce. So for your reading pleasure, I give you a random sampling of some of Mark Twain's best stuff!
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Courtship lifts a young fellow far and away above his common earthly self and by an impulse natural to those lofty regions he puts on his halo and his heavenly war paint and plays archangel as if he were born to it. He is working a deception, but is not aware of it.- "Which Was the Dream"The romance of life is the only part of it which is overwhelmingly valuable, and romance dies with youth. After that, life is a drudge, & indeed a sham.- Letter to Will Bowen, 6/6/1900
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Total abstinence is so excellent a thing that it cannot be carried to too great an extent. In my passion for it I even carry it so far as to totally abstain from total abstinence itself.
- autograph inscription in album to Mrs. Rutherford B. Hayes, reported in The Washington Post, June 11, 1881
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The romance of life is the only part of it which is overwhelmingly valuable, and romance dies with youth. After that, life is a drudge, & indeed a sham.
- Letter to Will Bowen, 6/6/1900
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We are all erring creatures, and mainly idiots, but God made us so and it is dangerous to criticise.
- Letter to the President of Western Union, New York, 1902
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would rather have my ignorance than another man's knowledge, because I have so much more of it.
- Letter to W.D. Howells, 2/10/1875
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All Congresses and Parliaments have a kindly feeling for idiots, and a compassion for them, on account of personal experience and heredity.
- Mark Twain's Autobiography
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After all these years, I see that I was mistaken about Eve in the beginning; it is better to live outside the Garden with her than inside it without her.
- "Adam's Diary"
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There is in life only one moment and in eternity only one. It is so brief that it is represented by the fleeting of a luminous mote through the thin ray of sunlight--and it is visible but a fraction of a second. The moments that preceded it have been lived, are forgotten and are without value; the moments that have not been lived have no existence and will have no value except in the moment that each shall be lived. While you are asleep you are dead; and whether you stay dead an hour or a billion years the time to you is the same.
- Mark Twain's Notebook, 1896
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The elastic heart of youth cannot be compressed into one constrained shape long at a time.
- The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
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The Impartial Friend: 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.- Mark Twain, last written statement; Moments with Mark Twain, Paine
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Courtship lifts a young fellow far and away above his common earthly self and by an impulse natural to those lofty regions he puts on his halo and his heavenly war paint and plays archangel as if he were born to it. He is working a deception, but is not aware of it.- "Which Was the Dream"The romance of life is the only part of it which is overwhelmingly valuable, and romance dies with youth. After that, life is a drudge, & indeed a sham.- Letter to Will Bowen, 6/6/1900
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Total abstinence is so excellent a thing that it cannot be carried to too great an extent. In my passion for it I even carry it so far as to totally abstain from total abstinence itself.
- autograph inscription in album to Mrs. Rutherford B. Hayes, reported in The Washington Post, June 11, 1881
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The romance of life is the only part of it which is overwhelmingly valuable, and romance dies with youth. After that, life is a drudge, & indeed a sham.
- Letter to Will Bowen, 6/6/1900
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We are all erring creatures, and mainly idiots, but God made us so and it is dangerous to criticise.
- Letter to the President of Western Union, New York, 1902
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would rather have my ignorance than another man's knowledge, because I have so much more of it.
- Letter to W.D. Howells, 2/10/1875
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All Congresses and Parliaments have a kindly feeling for idiots, and a compassion for them, on account of personal experience and heredity.
- Mark Twain's Autobiography
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After all these years, I see that I was mistaken about Eve in the beginning; it is better to live outside the Garden with her than inside it without her.
- "Adam's Diary"
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There is in life only one moment and in eternity only one. It is so brief that it is represented by the fleeting of a luminous mote through the thin ray of sunlight--and it is visible but a fraction of a second. The moments that preceded it have been lived, are forgotten and are without value; the moments that have not been lived have no existence and will have no value except in the moment that each shall be lived. While you are asleep you are dead; and whether you stay dead an hour or a billion years the time to you is the same.
- Mark Twain's Notebook, 1896
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The elastic heart of youth cannot be compressed into one constrained shape long at a time.
- The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
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The Impartial Friend: 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.- Mark Twain, last written statement; Moments with Mark Twain, Paine
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3 comments:
And he was from Missouri, which supports my theory that more intelligence and wit comes from that state than any other. To argue would denote a level of confidence disproportionate with your level of experience.
I love Mark Twain, too! FYI, there was an article about him in the Arkansas Democrat Gazette yesterday (Sunday 12/14) that you might find interesting. It's about his early career as a journalist and how he got in trouble by playing with the "hard facts" and being too witty for his own good.
Oooh, Ash. That's a comment worthy of Twain. :-D
Wasn't John Ashcroft from MO?
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