“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
“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.
“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.
“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.
“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.
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.
Image source courtesy of twainquotes.com
“If we would learn what the human race really is at bottom, we need only observe it in election times.”
–Mark Twain, Autobiography
Elections reflect the highest ideals of society, executed by the lowest means of human nature.
”The rain …falls upon the just and the unjust alike; a thing which would not happen if I were superintending the rain’s affairs. No, I would rain softly and sweetly on the just, but if I caught a sample of the unjust outdoors I would drown him.”
-Mark Twain
It doesn’t always seem as if everyone gets the justice they deserve, whether it be the sweet justice of a life well-lived or the terrible kind descending down upon the heads of the mean and wicked.
We may not always think it right, but justice, like the rain, will find its way – and will fall upon everyone’s head eventually.
“There isn’t a rich man in your vast city who doesn’t perjure himself every year before the tax board.”
-Mark Twain
Many a tall tale will be told today.
“We build a fire in a powder magazine, then double the fire department to put it out. We inflame wild beasts with the smell of blood, and then innocently wonder at the wave of brutal appetite that sweeps the land as a consequence.”
-Mark Twain, 1907 speech
It’s the same old story. Playing with fire and wondering why it burns.