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Mark Twain Quotes
Quotes tagged as "mark-twain" Showing 61-90 of 105
"I apologize for such a long letter - I didn't have time to write a short one."
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"One day I was handed a few volumes of new literature unlike anything I had ever read before and so captivating as to make me utterly forget my hopeless state. They were the earlier works of Mark Twain and to them might have been due the miraculous recovery which followed. Twenty-five years later, when I met Mr. Clemens and we formed a friendship between us, I told him of the experience and was amazed to see that great man of laughter burst into tears."
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"Consider the great Samuel Clemens. Huckleberry Finn is one of the few books that all American children are mandated to read: Jonathan Arac, in his brilliant new study of the teaching of Huck, is quite right to term it 'hyper-canonical.' And Twain is a figure in American history as well as in American letters. The only objectors to his presence in the schoolroom are mediocre or fanatical racial nationalists or 'inclusivists,' like Julius Lester or the Chicago-based Dr John Wallace, who object to Twain's use—in or out of 'context'—of the expression 'nigger.' An empty and formal 'debate' on this has dragged on for decades and flares up every now and again to bore us. But what if Twain were taught as a whole? He served briefly as a Confederate soldier, and wrote a hilarious and melancholy account, The Private History of a Campaign That Failed. He went on to make a fortune by publishing the memoirs of Ulysses Grant. He composed a caustic and brilliant report on the treatment of the Congolese by King Leopold of the Belgians. With William Dean Howells he led the Anti-Imperialist League, to oppose McKinley's and Roosevelt's pious and sanguinary war in the Philippines. Some of the pamphlets he wrote for the league can be set alongside those of Swift and Defoe for their sheer polemical artistry. In 1900 he had a public exchange with Winston Churchill in New York City, in which he attacked American support for the British war in South Africa and British support for the American war in Cuba. Does this count as history? Just try and find any reference to it, not just in textbooks but in more general histories and biographies. The Anti-Imperialist League has gone down the Orwellian memory hole, taking with it a great swirl of truly American passion and intellect, and the grand figure of Twain has become reduced—in part because he upended the vials of ridicule over the national tendency to religious and spiritual quackery, where he discerned what Tocqueville had missed and far anticipated Mencken—to that of a drawling, avuncular fabulist."
― Love, Poverty, and War: Journeys and Essays
― Love, Poverty, and War: Journeys and Essays
"The government of my country snubs honest simplicity but fondles artistic villainy, and I think I might have developed into a very capable pickpocket if I had remained in the public service a year or two."
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"When I reflect upon the number of disagreeable people who have gone on to a better world, I am moved to lead a different life."
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"You gwyne to have considerable trouble in yo' life, en considerable joy. Sometimes you gwyne to git hurt, en sometimes you gwyne to git sick; but every time you's gwyne to git well agin."
― The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
― The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
"I reck'n I knows what I knows."
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"A wise man does not waste so good a commodity as lying for naught."
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"Tra vent'anni sarete più delusi per le cose che non avete fatto che per quelle che avete fatto.
Quindi mollate le cime. Allontanatevi dal porto sicuro. Prendete con le vostre vele i venti.
Esplorate. Sognate. Scoprite."
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Quindi mollate le cime. Allontanatevi dal porto sicuro. Prendete con le vostre vele i venti.
Esplorate. Sognate. Scoprite."
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"I have made it a rule never to smoke more than one cigar at a time. I have no other restriction as regards smoking. I do not know just when I began to smoke, I only know that it was in my father's lifetime, and that I was discreet. He passed from this life early in 1847, when I was a shade past 11; ever since then I have smoked publicly. As an example to others, and not that I care for moderation myself, it has always been my rule never to smoke when asleep and never to refrain when awake.
I smoke in bed until I have to go to sleep; I wake up in the night, sometimes once, sometimes twice, sometimes three times, and I never waste any of these opportunities to smoke. This habit is so old and dear and precious to me that if I should break it I should feel as you, Sir, would feel if you should lose the only moral you've got."
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"It seems manifest, then, that the latter tongue (German) ought to be trimmed down and repaired. If it is to remain as it is, it ought to be gently and reverently set aside among the dead languages, for only the dead have time to learn it."
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"A photograph is a most important document, and there is nothing more damning to go down to posterity than a silly, foolish smile caught and fixed forever."
― Mark Twain And The Happy Island
― Mark Twain And The Happy Island
"Sir Walter Scott created rank & caste in the South and also reverence for and pride and pleasure in them. Life on the Mississippi
Don Quixote swept admiration for medieval chivalry-silliness out of existence. Ivanhoe restored it. Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi"
― Life on the Mississippi
"Bekase why: would a wise man ant to live in de mid's er such a blimblammin' all de time? No--'deed he wouldn't. A wise man 'ud take en buil' a biler-factry; en den he could shet down de biler-factory when he want to res'."
― The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
― The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
"I felt very good; I judged I had done it pretty neat--I reckoned Tom Sawyer couldn't a done it no neater himself. Of course he would a throwed more style into it, but I can't do that very handy, not being brung up with it."
― The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
― The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
"Mark Twain said the difference between the right word and the almost right word is like the difference between lightning and the lightning bug, and people think he was good, right ? Didn't write any decent characters, as far as I can tell, but otherwise fine."
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"Yes. And I'm rich now when I think about it. I own myself, and I'm worth eight hundred dollars. I wish I had the money. Then I wouldn't ever want anything else"
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"No alien land in all the world has any deep strong charm for me but one, no other land could so longingly and so beseechingly haunt me, sleeping and waking, through half a lifetime, as that one has done. Other things leave me, but it abides me; other things change, but it remains the same. For me its balmy airs are always blowing, its summer seas flashing in the sun; the pulsing of it surfbeat is in my ear; I can see its garland crags, its leaping cascades, its plumy palms drowsing by the shore, its remote summits floating like islands above the cloud wrack; I can feel the woodland solitudes, I can hear the splash of its brooks; in my nostrils still lives the breath of flowers that perished twenty years ago."
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"Being skilled in Catsism is like being a ninja only deadlier and not so silent. The only bad thing is the sickening grammar you have to use."
― Nothing is here...
― Nothing is here...
"It can be argued that the history of the United States is an uninterrupted cavalcade of such transformative moments. Walt was a devotee of the eternal process of becoming, one of the creative American geniuses that continually advanced our art and technology while preserving so much of our past. As usual, with the panoramic view from the riverboat landing, Disneyland gets both the overall patterns and the tiny details of this eternal magic moment just right."
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"Do you know who Samuel Langhorne Clemens is, Antonio?" Bessie asked.
"No, chood I?" he said.
"He is best known as Mark Twain, the author of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer," she said.
"I have herd of the story, but I hav not red the booc," he said.
"Well, you should read it," she said. "It is excellent reading. An American classic. Mark Twain worked in Schoharie for a while," she said.
"Is that so?" he said.
"Yes, he worked as a brakeman on the Schoharie railroad station on Depot Street the winter of 1879, three years after he wrote his famous book," Bessie said.
"Why would he do that, a famos author?" Antonio asked.
"A self-published author, I should add."
― Antonio's Will
"No, chood I?" he said.
"He is best known as Mark Twain, the author of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer," she said.
"I have herd of the story, but I hav not red the booc," he said.
"Well, you should read it," she said. "It is excellent reading. An American classic. Mark Twain worked in Schoharie for a while," she said.
"Is that so?" he said.
"Yes, he worked as a brakeman on the Schoharie railroad station on Depot Street the winter of 1879, three years after he wrote his famous book," Bessie said.
"Why would he do that, a famos author?" Antonio asked.
"A self-published author, I should add."
― Antonio's Will
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