Archive for Mark Twain in Today’s World
On Blowing Smoke
Posted by: | Comments“It is a talent by itself to pay compliments gracefully and have them ring true. It is an art in itself.”
- Mark Twain, speech, “The Lost Lotos Club”
You da’ man… No you da’ man…
On the Value of Education
Posted by: | Comments“Education: that which reveals to the wise, and conceals from the stupid, the vast limits of their knowledge.”
-Mark Twain
The better the education, the more you know what you don’t know – unless you’re too stupid. Then you know everything.
On Finally Being at Rest
Posted by: | Comments“Death, the refuge, the solace, the best and kindliest and most prized friend and benefactor of the erring, the forsaken, the old, and weary, and broken of heart, whose burdens be heavy upon them, and who would lie down and be at rest.”
-Mark Twain
Lying down in peace, knowing that the burdens of this life have been fulfilled, the wrongs committed released, the injuries suffered healed. To finally, at last, rest with an unburdened soul.
That is perhaps the best we can hope for.
On Being Truly Virtuous
Posted by: | Comments“The weakest of all weak things is a virtue that has not been tested in the fire.”
-Mark Twain
It’s one thing to act virtuously and not know any better, quite another to remain so when aware of the options.
On Seizing the Day
Posted by: | Comments“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”
-Mark Twain
To all there comes but once chance at each day, and then the opportunity to live it to its fullest is gone. For most, regret is of lost opportunities, not mistaken actions. Seize the day!
On the Illusion of Original Thought
Posted by: | Comments“We are nothing but echoes. We have no thoughts of our own, no opinions of our own, we are but a compost heap made up of the decayed heredities, moral and physical.”
-Mark Twain
We may believe that we’ve whistled a new tune or scratched out a new phrase more beautiful or clever than anyone thought to do before. We are but fooling ourselves and have only to thank all who have gone before us, throughout the long eons of time, for such foolishness.
On the Power of Words
Posted by: | Comments“A powerful agent is the right word. Whenever we come upon one of those intensely right words in a book or a newspaper the resulting effect is physical as well as spiritual, and electrically prompt: it tingles exquisitely around through the walls of the mouth and tastes as tart and crisp and good as the autumn-butter that creams the sumac-berry.”
-Mark Twain
Sticks and stones may break my bones, but it on foundation of ideas, as sublimely expressed in words, upon which civilizations are built.
On Watching Your 401k Too Closely
Posted by: | Comments“He is now fast rising from affluence to poverty.”
-Mark Twain
Unmatched is the speed with which all illusions of growing affluence disappear into oblivion.
Don’t look. It won’t make you any richer.
On Hockey Moms and Vice Presidents
Posted by: | Comments“Never try to teach a pig to sing. It wastes time and annoys the pig.”
-Mark Twain
And putting lipstick on the pig doesn’t help either. If Sarah Palin has taught us anything, this is it.
On Confusing Belief with Truth and Repition with Examination
Posted by: | Comments“In religion and politics people’s beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination, from authorities who have not themselves examined the questions at issue but have taken them at second-hand from other non-examiners, whose opinions about them were not worth a brass farthing”
-Mark Twain, Autobiography
I know its true ‘cause I just read it on a blog and heard Rush Limbaugh talk about it.