Sunday, October 25, 2009
More Wit and Wisdom of Mark Twain
HUMOR, QUOTABLE QUOTES
In 1894, Mark Twain found himself almost bankrupt. He had invested $100,000 (equivalent to about $2 million today) in a venture to make a "revolutionary" typesetting machine. To free himself from debt, he made a lecture tour of the British Empire in 1895. He chose that route because it gave him many opportunities to lecture in the English language.
Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World, his engaging account of that trip, was published in 1897. In it Twain cleverly unmasked and criticized racism, imperialism and missionary zeal in observations woven into the narrative with classical Twain wit. The following aphorisms have all been extracted from that travelogue:
Don't part with your illusions. When they are gone you may still exist, but you have ceased to live.
The average human being is a perverse creature; and when he isn't that, he is a practical joker.
Be good. You will be lonesome.
In statesmanship get the formalities right, never mind about the moralities.
There are people who can do all fine and heroic things but one--keep from telling their happiness to the unhappy.
The very ink with which all history is a written is merely fluid prejudice.
The taboo was the most ingenious and effective of all the inventions that have ever been devised for keeping a people's privileges satisfactorily restricted.
Jane Austen's books, too, are absent from this library. Just that one omission alone would make a fairly good library out of a library that hadn't a book in it.
There are several good protections against temptations, but the surest is cowardice.
It takes your enemy and your friend, working together, to hurt you to the heart; the one to slander you and the other to get the news to you.
We all like to see people in trouble, if it doesn't cost us anything.
When people do not respect us we are sharply offended; yet deep down in his private heart no man much respects himself.
There are no people who are quite so vulgar are as the over-refined ones.
There are people who think that honesty is always the best policy. This is a superstition; there are times when the appearance of it is worth six of it.
A human being has a natural desire to have more of a good thing then he needs.
A crime persevered in a thousand centuries ceases to be a crime, and becomes a virtue. This is the law of custom, and custom supersedes all other forms of law.
Be careless in your dress if you must, but keep a tidy soul.
It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is in no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress.
By trying, we can easily learn to endure adversity. Another man's, I mean.
To succeed in the other trades, capacity must be shown; in the law, concealment of it will do.
We begin to swear before we can talk.
The only difference that I know of between a silent lie and a spoken one is that the silent lie is a less a respectable one than the other. And it can deceive, whereas the other can't--as a rule.
Truth is the most valuable thing we have. Let us economize it.
There isn't a parallel of latitude but thinks it would have been the Equator if it had had its rights.
Let's be thankful for the fools. But for them the rest of us could not succeed.
Grief can take care of itself; but to get the full value of a joy you must have somebody to divide it with.
Prosperity is the best protector of principle.
Man will do many things to get himself loved; he will do all things to get himself envied.
The human being's first duty--which is to think about himself until he has exhausted the subject, then he is in a condition to take up minor interests and think of other people.
The only way to keep your health is to eat what you don't want, drink what you don't like, and do what you'd druther not.
Often the surest way to convey misinformation is to tell the strict truth.
There are those who scoff at the schoolboy, calling him frivolous and shallow. Yet it was the schoolboy who said, "Faith is believing what you know ain't so."
Pity is for the living, envy is for the dead.
It is my belief that nearly any invented quotation, played with confidence, stands a good chance to deceive.
If the desire to kill and the opportunity to kill came always together, who would escape hanging?
My own luck has been curious all my literary life; I could never tell a lie that anybody would doubt, nor a truth that anybody would believe.
We can secure other people's approval, if we do right and try hard; but our own is worth a hundred of it, and no way has been found out of securing that.
Custom makes incongruous things congruous.
There are 869 different forms of lying, but only one of them has been squarely forbidden: Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.
There are many humorous things in the world; among them, the white man's notion that he is less savage than the other savages.
The man who is ostentatious of his modesty is twin to the statue that wears a fig leaf.
Noise proves nothing. Often a hen that has merely laid an egg cackles as if she had laid an asteroid.
Classic: Any book that people praise and don't read.
Human pride is not worthwhile; there is always something lying in wait to take the wind out of it.
Simple rules for saving money: To save half, when you are fired by an eager impulse to contribute to a charity, wait, and count forty. To save three-quarters, count sixty. To save it all, count sixty-five.
To make a pledge of any kind is to declare war against nature; for a pledge is a chain that is always clanking and reminding the wearer of it that he is not a free man.
It is easier to stay out than get out.
History shows us that the Moral Sense enables us to perceive morality and how to avoid it, and that the Immoral Sense enables us to perceive immorality and how to enjoy it.
To be good is noble but to show others how to be good is nobler and no trouble.
Make it a point to do something every day that you don't want to do. This is the golden rule for acquiring the habit of doing your duty without pain.
The secret source of humor itself is not joy but sorrow. There is no humor in heaven.
It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them.
Man is the only animal that blushes. Or needs to.
The Autocrat of Russia possesses more power than any other man on the earth; but he cannot stop a sneeze.
Wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been.
The man with the new idea is a Crank until the idea succeeds.
It takes much to convince the average a man of anything and perhaps nothing can ever make him realize that he is the average woman's inferior.
Each person is born to one possession that outvalues all his others--his last breath.
Everyone is a moon, and has a dark side that he never shows to anybody.
In 1894, Mark Twain found himself almost bankrupt. He had invested $100,000 (equivalent to about $2 million today) in a venture to make a "revolutionary" typesetting machine. To free himself from debt, he made a lecture tour of the British Empire in 1895. He chose that route because it gave him many opportunities to lecture in the English language.
Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World, his engaging account of that trip, was published in 1897. In it Twain cleverly unmasked and criticized racism, imperialism and missionary zeal in observations woven into the narrative with classical Twain wit. The following aphorisms have all been extracted from that travelogue:
Don't part with your illusions. When they are gone you may still exist, but you have ceased to live.
The average human being is a perverse creature; and when he isn't that, he is a practical joker.
Be good. You will be lonesome.
In statesmanship get the formalities right, never mind about the moralities.
There are people who can do all fine and heroic things but one--keep from telling their happiness to the unhappy.
The very ink with which all history is a written is merely fluid prejudice.
The taboo was the most ingenious and effective of all the inventions that have ever been devised for keeping a people's privileges satisfactorily restricted.
Jane Austen's books, too, are absent from this library. Just that one omission alone would make a fairly good library out of a library that hadn't a book in it.
There are several good protections against temptations, but the surest is cowardice.
It takes your enemy and your friend, working together, to hurt you to the heart; the one to slander you and the other to get the news to you.
We all like to see people in trouble, if it doesn't cost us anything.
When people do not respect us we are sharply offended; yet deep down in his private heart no man much respects himself.
There are no people who are quite so vulgar are as the over-refined ones.
There are people who think that honesty is always the best policy. This is a superstition; there are times when the appearance of it is worth six of it.
A human being has a natural desire to have more of a good thing then he needs.
A crime persevered in a thousand centuries ceases to be a crime, and becomes a virtue. This is the law of custom, and custom supersedes all other forms of law.
Be careless in your dress if you must, but keep a tidy soul.
It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is in no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress.
By trying, we can easily learn to endure adversity. Another man's, I mean.
To succeed in the other trades, capacity must be shown; in the law, concealment of it will do.
We begin to swear before we can talk.
The only difference that I know of between a silent lie and a spoken one is that the silent lie is a less a respectable one than the other. And it can deceive, whereas the other can't--as a rule.
Truth is the most valuable thing we have. Let us economize it.
There isn't a parallel of latitude but thinks it would have been the Equator if it had had its rights.
Let's be thankful for the fools. But for them the rest of us could not succeed.
Grief can take care of itself; but to get the full value of a joy you must have somebody to divide it with.
Prosperity is the best protector of principle.
Man will do many things to get himself loved; he will do all things to get himself envied.
The human being's first duty--which is to think about himself until he has exhausted the subject, then he is in a condition to take up minor interests and think of other people.
The only way to keep your health is to eat what you don't want, drink what you don't like, and do what you'd druther not.
Often the surest way to convey misinformation is to tell the strict truth.
There are those who scoff at the schoolboy, calling him frivolous and shallow. Yet it was the schoolboy who said, "Faith is believing what you know ain't so."
Pity is for the living, envy is for the dead.
It is my belief that nearly any invented quotation, played with confidence, stands a good chance to deceive.
If the desire to kill and the opportunity to kill came always together, who would escape hanging?
My own luck has been curious all my literary life; I could never tell a lie that anybody would doubt, nor a truth that anybody would believe.
We can secure other people's approval, if we do right and try hard; but our own is worth a hundred of it, and no way has been found out of securing that.
Custom makes incongruous things congruous.
There are 869 different forms of lying, but only one of them has been squarely forbidden: Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.
There are many humorous things in the world; among them, the white man's notion that he is less savage than the other savages.
The man who is ostentatious of his modesty is twin to the statue that wears a fig leaf.
Noise proves nothing. Often a hen that has merely laid an egg cackles as if she had laid an asteroid.
Classic: Any book that people praise and don't read.
Human pride is not worthwhile; there is always something lying in wait to take the wind out of it.
Simple rules for saving money: To save half, when you are fired by an eager impulse to contribute to a charity, wait, and count forty. To save three-quarters, count sixty. To save it all, count sixty-five.
To make a pledge of any kind is to declare war against nature; for a pledge is a chain that is always clanking and reminding the wearer of it that he is not a free man.
It is easier to stay out than get out.
History shows us that the Moral Sense enables us to perceive morality and how to avoid it, and that the Immoral Sense enables us to perceive immorality and how to enjoy it.
To be good is noble but to show others how to be good is nobler and no trouble.
Make it a point to do something every day that you don't want to do. This is the golden rule for acquiring the habit of doing your duty without pain.
The secret source of humor itself is not joy but sorrow. There is no humor in heaven.
It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them.
Man is the only animal that blushes. Or needs to.
The Autocrat of Russia possesses more power than any other man on the earth; but he cannot stop a sneeze.
Wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been.
The man with the new idea is a Crank until the idea succeeds.
It takes much to convince the average a man of anything and perhaps nothing can ever make him realize that he is the average woman's inferior.
Each person is born to one possession that outvalues all his others--his last breath.
Everyone is a moon, and has a dark side that he never shows to anybody.
Labels: Humor, Mark Twain, Quotable Quotes
