Archive for Philisophy of Mark Twain
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 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.
Image Credit: TwainQuotes.com
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 the True Genius of Hard Work
Posted by: | Comments“…genius itself succeeds only by arduous self-training…to play on the fiddle it is not merely necessary to take a bow and fiddle with it.”
-Mark Twain, “Contributors Club”, Atlantic, January 1877
Genius without repeated and practiced execution is only conceit.