Archive for Mark Twain

Jan
09

On the Power of Humor

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Humor is the great thing, the saving thing. The minute it crops up, all our irritations and resentments slip away and a sunny spirit takes their place.
-Mark Twain

A person harboring resentment or fear is best served by finding their sense of humor.

“New Year’s is a harmless annual institution, of no particular use to anybody save as a scapegoat for promiscuous drunks, and friendly calls and humbug resolutions.”
-Mark Twain

New Years Eve is one of the saddest holidays of the year; no it is the saddest. People only look happy because they’ve had too much to drink, many with the notion that it is for the last time.

Dec
24

A Letter From Santa Claus

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A Letter from Santa ClausBy Mark Twain

I have received and read all the letters which you and your little sister have written me… I can read your and your baby sister’s jagged and fantastic marks without any trouble at all. But I had trouble with those letters which you dictated through your mother and the nurses, for I am a foreigner and cannot read English writing well.

You will find that I made no mistakes about the things which you and the baby ordered in your own letters – I went down your chimney at midnight when you were asleep and delivered them all myself – and kissed both of you, too… But there were one or two small orders which I could not fill because we ran out of stock…

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Seeing clearly the true meaning of Christmas - Mark Twain's words in letter to a friend“The xmas holidays have this high value: that they remind Forgetters of the Forgotten, & repair damaged relationships.”
-Mark Twain, letter to Carlotte Welles, 30 December 1907

Christmas is love. All else obscures its essential meaning.

Image credit: caruba, courtesy Flickr


“Loyalty to petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul in this world – and never will.”
-Mark Twain

Freedom begins with keeping an open mind.

Apr
07

On Learning to See

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“You can’t depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.”
-Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court

It is with our eyes that we look, but only with our imagination that we see.

Mar
24

On Textbooks in Texas

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“The very ink with which all history is written is merely fluid prejudice.”
-Mark Twain, Following the Equator

For the Texas Board of Education, America wasn’t founded on the principal of the separation of church and state, every good capitalist is actually a free-market conservative, McCarthy wasn’t really that bad, and Thomas Jefferson had nothing to do with inspiring revolution in 18th-century America.

And the ink dries on prejudice in Texas.

“Nothing that grieves us can be called little: by the eternal laws of proportion a child’s loss of a doll and a king’s loss of a crown are events of the same size.”
-Mark Twain, “Which Was the Dream

All loss is profound. Comfort is found by seeing equally in other’s sorrow – and joy – a measure of our own.

“It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so”
-Mark Twain

The more tenaciously a thought is held, the more irrational it becomes. But it ain’t necessarily  so.

Feb
28

On Conspiracy Theories

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“I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, most of them never happened.”
- Mark Twain

Beware the boogie man in the dark corner, for he just may not exist.