“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
”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.
“There isn’t a Parallel of latitude but thinks it would have been the Equator if it had had its rights.”
-Mark Twain, Following the Equator
The center of the world, that’s what the equator thinks of itself. A balmy middle of equal days and nights, one after the other, on and on, breezing along in the warm sun.
But stand at any point on earth – say, for instance, the 60th parallel – where polar bears lumber and long winter nights reveal shimmering curtains of light from the rarefied, electrically-charged atmosphere known as Aurora Borealis.
What, then, is so special of the equator? All points are at once center and edge. Head out long enough in one direction and you’ll soon be back right where you started. Every place is its own equator.
Mark Twain takes a break:
I don’t think Mark Twain ever visited the 60th parallel, but, well, somebody has to. I’ll be away for the next three weeks on an Earthwatch expedition to Churchill, Manitoba. It seems as if Mark Twain would rather stay nearer the “equator” and wait for his adoring admirer to come full circle. We’ll be back the first week of March. Keep the faith.
“I do not make any pretense that I dislike compliments. The stronger the better and I can manage to digest them.”
-Mark Twain, speech, “The Last Lotos Club”
Do go on.
Really, though, enough about me…
How was I?
“No party holds the privilege of dictating to me how I shall vote. If loyalty to party is a form of patriotism, I am no patriot. If there is any valuable difference between a monarchist and an American, it lies in the theory that the American can decide for himself what is patriotic and what isn’t. I claim that difference. I am the only person in the sixty millions that is privileged to dictate my patriotism.”
-Mark Twain
Party politics is the reality of our political process, but does it always foster a truly patriotic spirit?
Nobody, whether Democrat, Republican, or any other political party, can decree what constitutes individual patriotism. For better or worse, that is left for me to decide – but only for me. You’ll have to decide for yourself, as will what is now some 300 million other American souls.
What a messy business this American republic is. And when it works, what a miracle.
“If man could be crossed with the cat, it would improve man, but it would deteriorate the cat.”
-Mark Twain
Besides, the cat would have none of it.
“A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way.”
-Mark Twain
A lesson hard won – such as holding the cat by its tail – need only be learned once, but it is surely learned well.
At least one hopes – and if not, it’s your own damn fault.
“The very ink with which all history is written is merely fluid prejudice”
-Mark Twain
The story of our past changes with each telling, and each person telling it. As such, it is best, most times, to get a second opinion.