Archive for Mark Twain Quotes
On Christmas, Remembrance, and Healing
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“The xmas holidays have this high value: that they remind Forgetters of the Forgotten, & repair damaged relationships.”
- Mark Twain, from a letter to Carlotte Welles, December 30, 1907
Christmas, the holiday season, is, at its best, a time of remembering who and what is important. A time of healing.
Merry Christmas to the forgetters, the forgotten, and all who believe in our power to heal all the ills, hatreds, and misfortunes that at times plague us all.
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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.
On Ribbons on Your Chest and Letters Around Your Name
Posted by: | Comments“It is better to deserve honors and not have them than to have them and not deserve them.”
-Mark Twain
Honor is a thing that eventually reveals itself – one way or the other. It is best not to claim too loudly any honor that is not truly ours in solitude of our own contemplation. It is then that we realize that sort of “honor” is little more than hubris and foolishness.
On How, For the Good of the Country, One July 4th per Year Isn’t Enough
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“Statistics show that we lose more fools on this day than in all the other days of the year put together. This proves, by the number left in stock, that one Fourth of July per year is now inadequate, the country has grown so.”
-Mark Twain, Pudd’nhead Wilson’s Calendar
Pass me that M-80 would ya’?
God Bless America
On Maintaining Perspective
Posted by: | Comments“Now you begin to see, don’t you, that distance ain’t the thing to judge by, at all; it’s the time it takes to go the distance in that counts….It’s a matter of proportion, that’s what it is; and when you come to gauge a thing’s speed by its size, where’s your bird and your man and your railroad alongside of a flea?….A flea is just a comet, b’iled down small.”
-Mark Twain, Tom Sawyer Abroad
In all things, greatness. If you know how to put it in the right perspective.
On Moral Courage
Posted by: | Comments“All right, then, I’ll go to hell”
-Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Condemnation to the banks of hell. If that isn’t a reason to do the right thing, then none exists. Moral courage rarely happens in a church pew.
On How Wisdom is Knowing That You Don’t Know
Posted by: | Comments“Some things you can’t find out; but you will never know you can’t by guessing and supposing; no, you have to be patient and go on experimenting until you find out that you can’t find out.”
-Mark Twain, Eve’s Diary
Give it time, you’ll eventually know how much it is that you’ll never know.
You’ll then have taken the first halting steps toward wisdom.
On Remaining Curious
Posted by: | Comments“If there wasn’t anything to find out, it would be dull. Even trying to find out and not finding out is just as interesting as trying to find out and finding out; and I don’t know but more so.”
-Mark Twain
It’s impossible to know everything, and dangerous to think you do. But to remain curious, there’s the thing.
And if wanting to know as much about everything as you can doesn’t make the world a more interesting place, it might make you more interesting to the world.
On Truth and the Public Trust
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When an honest writer discovers an imposition it is his simple duty to strip it bare and hurl it down from its place of honor, no matter who suffers by it; any other course would render him unworthy of the public confidence.
-Mark Twain, A Tramp Abroad
The writer is best when he is the impostor’s worst enemy.
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