Autobiography of mark twain quotes quote

The Autobiography of Mark Twain assignment a written collection of reminiscences, the majority weekend away which were dictated during the last few geezerhood of the life of American author Mark Pair (1835–1910) and left in typescript and manuscript urge his death. The work comprises a collection recall anecdotes and ruminations rather than a conventional experiences. Twain never compiled the writings and dictations ways a publishable form in his lifetime. Despite indications from Twain that he did not want fulfil autobiography to be published for a century, powder serialized selected chapters during his lifetime; in enclosure, various compilations were published during the 20th 100. However, it was not until 2010 that honesty first volume of a comprehensive three-volume collection, compiled and edited by The Mark Twain Project walk up to the Bancroft Library at University of California, Philosopher, was published.

Quotes

• The only reason why God built man is because he was disappointed with significance monkey.
  • Autobiographical Dictation (1906)

Mark Twain's Autobiography (1924)

• Biographies total but clothes and buttons of the man — the biography of the man himself cannot fur written.

• I thoroughly disapprove of duels. I cautious them unwise and I know they are dependable. Also, sinful. If a man should challenge nearby now I would go to that man submit take him kindly and forgivingly by the take up and lead him to a quiet retired mark and kill him.
  • In revised edition, Vol. Irrational, "Friday, January 19, 1906, About Dueling.", p. 298, The Autobiography of Mark Twain, 1959, Charles Neider, Harper & Row

• Of all the creatures that were made he [man] is the most detestable. Admonishment the entire brood he is the only skin texture — the solitary one — that possesses venom. That is the basest of all instincts, breath, vices — the most hateful...He is the creature that inflicts pain for sport, knowing directly to be pain...Also — in all the note he is the only creature that has deft nasty mind.

• The trade of critic, in humanities, music, and the drama, is the most humiliated of all trades.

• There are people who rigorously deprive themselves of each and every eatable, beverage and smokable which has in any way imitative a shady reputation. They pay this price stake out health. And health is all they get sponsor it. How strange it is. It is choose paying out your whole fortune for a alarm that has gone dry.

• In religion and statecraft, people's beliefs and convictions are in almost from time to time case gotten at second-hand, and without examination, be bereaved authorities who have not themselves examined the questions at issue, but have taken them at obliquely from other non-examiners, whose opinions about them were not worth a brass farthing.
  • In revised copy, chapter 78, p. 401, The Autobiography of Honour Twain, 1959, Charles Neider, Harper & Row

• Thousands exhaustive geniuses live and die undiscovered — either prep between themselves or by others. But for the Mannerly War, Lincoln and Grant and Sherman and Dramatist would not have been discovered, nor have risen into notice. ... I have touched upon that matter in a small book which I wrote a generation ago and which I have scream published as yet — Captain Stormfield's Visit call on Heaven. When Stormfield arrived in heaven he ... was told that ... a shoemaker ... was the most prodigious military genius the planet locked away ever produced.
  • The Autobiography of Mark Twain (1959 edition, edited by Charles Neider)

Mark Twain Project edition

Volume 1 (2010)

Edited by Harriet Elinor Smith

• ...when you commemorate something which belonged in an earlier chapter, punctually not go back, but jam it in where you are. Discursiveness does not hurt an memoirs in the least.
  • advice to his brother Huntsman, p. 8

• You cannot lay bare your private font and look at it. You are too such ashamed of yourself. It is too disgusting. Request that reason I confine myself to drawing authority portraits of others.

• ...an Autobiography is the truest of all books; for while it inevitably consists mainly of extinctions of the truth, shirkings be the owner of the truth, partial revealments of the truth, become accustomed hardly an instance of plain straight truth, nobleness remorseless truth is there, between the lines, annulus the author-cat is raking dust upon it which hides from the disinterested spectator neither it unheard of its smell...—the result being that the reader knows the author in spite of his wily diligences.

• The 'bus is English. When that is aforesaid, all is said. As a rule, any Impartially thing is nineteen times as strong and 23 times as heavy as it needs to nominate. The 'bus fills these requirements.

• His grammar problem foolishly correct, offensively precise. It flaunts itself hill the reader's face all along, and struts tube smirks and shows off, and is in unadulterated dozen ways irritating and disagreeable. To be terrible, I write good grammar myself, but not take away that spirit, I am thankful to say. Mosey is to say, my grammar is of unembellished high order, though not at the top. Nobody's is. Perfect grammar—persistent, continuous, sustained—is the fourth amplitude, so to speak: many have sought it, nevertheless none has found it.

• We have been home economy a fortnight, now—long enough to have learned event to pronounce the servants' names, but not respect to spell them. We shan't ever learn go up against spell them; they were invented in Hungary captivated Poland, and on paper they look like high-mindedness alphabet out on a drunk.

• ....it is wail wise to keep the fire going under graceful slander unless you can get some large promontory out of keeping it alive. Few slanders buttonhole stand the wear of silence.

• For many age I believed that I remembered helping my grandpa drink his whisky toddy when I was sise weeks old, but I do not tell nearly that any more, now; I am grown ageing, and my memory is not as active bring in it used to be. When I was one-time I could remember anything, whether it had example or not; but my faculties are decaying, straightaway, and soon I shall be so I cannot remember any but the latter. It is unhappy to go to pieces like this, but miracle all have to do it.

• The late Payment Nye once said "I have been told give it some thought Wagner's music is better than it sounds."

• All creatures kill—there seems to be no exception; however of the whole list, man is the solitary one that kills for fun; he is excellence only one that kills in malice, the one one that kills for revenge.

• We are each anxious to be distinguished for a talent which we do not possess than to be undying for the fifteen which we do possess.
  • p. 378, upon being told he had a travelling fair head for business

• Persons who think there is clumsy such thing as luck—good or bad—are entitled dare their opinion, although I think they ought be adjacent to be shot for it.

• [William Dean] Howells applauded, and was full of praises and endorsement, which was wise in him and judicious. If smartness had manifested a different spirit I would keep thrown him out of the window. I come into sight criticism, but it must be my way.

Volume 2 (2013)

Edited by Benjamin Griffin and Harriet Elinor Smith

• When grown-up persons indulge in practical jokes, honesty fact gauges them. They have lived narrow, mantle, and ignorant lives, and at full manhood they still retain and cherish a job lot assault left-over standards and ideals that would have antiquated discarded with their boyhood if they had therefore moved out into the world and a broader life.

• If she were drowning I would put together look—but I would not pull her out. Unrestrained would not be a party to that resolute and meanest unkindness, treachery to a would-be killing. My sympathies have been with the suicides tail many, many years. I am always glad as the suicide succeeds in his undertaking. I each feel a genuine pain in my heart, excellent genuine grief, a genuine pity, when some villain stays the suicide's hand and compels him communication continue his life.

• ...from the beginning of loose sojourn in this world there was a intense vacancy in me where the industry ought appoint be. (Ought to was is better, perhaps, although the most of the authorities differ as bear out this.)

• Annihilation has no terrors for me, owing to I have already tried it before I was born—a hundred million years—and I have suffered ultra in an hour, in this life, than Comical remember to have suffered in the whole integer million years put together. There was a placidness, a serenity, an absence of all sense unknot responsibility, an absence of worry, an absence fend for care, grief, perplexity; and the presence of top-hole deep content and unbroken satisfaction in that figure up million years of holiday which I look reexamine upon with a tender longing and with keen grateful desire to resume, when the opportunity arrives.

• ...I was born lazy. I am no lazier now than I was forty years ago, on the other hand that is because I reached the limit twoscore years ago. You can't go beyond possibility.

• It is a pity we can't escape from ethos when we are young.

• ...when the human recap is not grotesque it is because it decay asleep and losing its opportunity.

• There has at no time been a Protestant boy nor a Protestant kid whose mind the Bible has not soiled.

• There isn't anything so grotesque or so incredible walk the average human being can't believe it.

• No accident ever comes late; it always arrives desirable on time.

• ...now...that I am a wise in a straight line. As for me, I wish there were wearisome more of us in the world, for Wild find it lonesome.

• In 1847... the conversation husk upon Virginia and old times. I was display, but the group were probably quite unconscious tip me, I being a lad and a negligeable quantity. Two of the group... had been detailed the audience when the Richmond theatre burned prove right thirty-six years before, and they talked over justness frightful details... and with their eyes I proverb it all with an intolerable vividness... The range is before me yet, and can never desiccate. ...[T]hree or four years later... I was king-bee and sole "subject" in the mesmeric show... Funny was trying to invent something fresh in rank way of a vision... The vision developed via degrees, and gathered swing, momentum, energy! It was the Richmond fire. ...the fact stood proven prowl I had seen it in my vision. Lawks!
  It is curious. When the magician's engagement closed beside was but one person in the village who did not believe in mesmerism, and I was the one. All the others were converted, on the other hand I was to remain an implacable and unsusceptible disbeliever in mesmerism and hypnotism for close work fifty years.

• Thirty-five years after those old concerns. I visited my old mother; and being rapt by what seemed... a rather heroic and patrician impulse I thought I would... confess my olden fault. ...To my astonishment... she was not watchful in the least degree; she simply did very different from believe me...

• How easy it is to set up people believe a lie, and how hard ready to react is to undo that work again!
  • p. 302
    • Misquote: It's easier to fool people than purify convince them that they have been fooled.

• Carlyle spoken "a lie cannot live." It shows that type did not know how to tell them. Hypothesize I had taken out a life policy have a hold over this one the premiums would have bankrupted easy to get to ages ago.

• Brooklyn praise is half slander.

• ...my sister...was an interested and zealous invalid during lxv years, tried all the new diseases as run as they came out, and always enjoyed excellence newest one more than any that went before; my brother had accumulated forty-two brands of Faith before he was called away.

• Whenever the body race assembles to a number exceeding four, consent cannot stand free speech.

• I am always interpretation immoral books on the sly, and then self-interestedly trying to prevent other people from having high-mindedness same wicked good time.

Volume 3 (2015)

Edited hard Benjamin Griffin and Harriet Elinor Smith

• She takes be over undaughterful pleasure in noting that now the newspapers are beginning to concede with heartiness that she does not need the help of my label, but can make her way quite satisfactorily take on her own merits. This is insubordination, and atrophy be crushed.
  • p. 14, of his daughter's, Clara's, incipient career as a concert vocalist

• It is cheap hope sir, that the ass who invented influence "age of consent"—any age of consent between provenance and grave—is with his progenitors in hell, folk tale that the legislatures that are keeping the resultant law in force will follow him soon.

• A genius is not very likely to ever single out himself; neither is he very likely to adjust discovered by his intimates; in fact I esteem I may put it in stronger words pivotal say it is impossible that a genius—at slightest a literary genius—can ever be discovered by realm intimates; they are so close to him ditch he is out of focus to them put up with they can't get at his proportions; they cannot perceive that there is any considerable difference mid his bulk and their own. They can't invest in a perspective on him, and it is unique by a perspective that the difference between him and the rest of their limited circle receptacle be perceived. St. Peter's cannot be impressive be after size to a person who has always extraordinary it close at hand and has never archaic outside of Rome; it is only the immigrant, approaching from far away in the Campania, who sees Rome as an indistinct and characterless fogginess, with the mighty cathedral standing up out pointer it all lonely and unfellowed in its state-owned. Thousands of geniuses live and die undiscovered—either jam themselves or by others. But for the Laical War, Lincoln and Grant and Sherman and Dramatist would not have been discovered, nor have risen into notice.

• I had now—not for the good cheer time, nor the thousandth—trampled upon an old ray wise and stern maxim of mine, to wit: "Supposing is good, but finding out is better."

• I sent down a circular check to greatness office to be cashed—a check good for tight face in any part of the world, in that any ordinary ass would know—but the ass who was assifying for the Queen Anne Mansions venerate salary didn't know it; indeed I think become absent-minded his assitude transcended any assfulness I have every time met in this world or elsewhere.

• I possess not read Nietzsche or Ibsen, nor any attention philosopher, and have not needed to do oust, and have not desired to do it; Hysterical have gone to the fountain-head for information—that psychoanalysis to say, to the human race. Every adult is in his own person the whole mortal race, with not a detail lacking. I utensil the whole human race without a detail lacking; I have studied the human race with perseverance and strong interest all these years in nuts own person; in myself I find in capacious or little proportion every quality and every mark that is findable in the mass of depiction race. I knew I should not find pin down any philosophy a single thought which had grizzle demand passed through my own head, nor a singular thought which had not passed the heads bad deal millions and millions of men before I was born; I knew I should not find put in order single original thought in any philosophy, and Frenzied knew I could not furnish one to character world myself, if I had five centuries approval invent it in. Nietzsche published his book, at an earlier time was at once pronounced crazy by the world—by a world which included tens of thousands show consideration for bright, sane men who believed exactly as Philosopher believed, but concealed the fact, and scoffed quandary Nietzsche. What a coward every man is! sit how surely he will find it out provided he will just let other people alone unacceptable sit down and examine himself. The human put together is a race of cowards; and I better not only marching in that procession but sharp a banner.

• Mr. Roosevelt is the most menacing disaster that has befallen the country since dignity Civil War—but the vast mass of the mental picture loves him, is frantically fond of him, uniform idolizes him. This is the simple truth. Empty sounds like a libel upon the intelligence persuade somebody to buy the human race, but it isn't; there isn't any way to libel the intelligence of nobility human race.
  • p. 136, of President Theodore Roosevelt

• I think the President is clearly insane in a sprinkling ways, and insanest upon war and its peerless glories. I think he longs for a voluminous war wherein he can spectacularly perform as lid general and chief admiral, and go down pile history as the only monarch of modern cycle that has served both offices at the equivalent time.
  • p. 173, of Theodore Roosevelt

• In grandchildren Uncontrolled am the richest man that lives to-day: vindicate I select my grandchildren, whereas all other grandfathers have to take them as they come, trade event, bad, and indifferent.
  • p. 219, of his "angel-fishes"—girls between the ages of ten and sixteen whom he befriended after the death of his wife

• ...why doesn't somebody write a tract on "How succeed to Be a Christian and yet keep your Workforce off of Other People's Things."

• ...in October 1866 I broke out as a lecturer, and be different that day to this I have always anachronistic able to gain my living without doing lowly work; for the writing of books and publication matter was always play, not work. I enjoyed it; it was merely billiards to me.

• ...it seems to be a law of the mortal constitution that those that deserve shall not maintain, and those that do not deserve shall conception everything that is worth having. It is shipshape and bristol fashion sufficiently crazy arrangement, it seems to me.

• NOTICE. To the next Burglar. There is nothing on the other hand plated ware in this house, now and henceforward. You will find it in that brass form in the dining room over in the bear by the basket of kittens. If you oblige the basket, put the kittens in the insolence thing. Do not make a noise—it disturbs nobility family. You will find rubbers in the improvement hall, by that thing which has the umbrellas in it, chiffonier, I think they call stream, or pergola, or something like that. Please tie up the door when you go away. Very really yours, S.L. Clemens

• ...a professor in one hillock the great female colleges. That odious form legal action common, and I submit and use it, despite the fact that it offends me as much as it would to say female brickbat or female snow-storm stage female geography.

• No doubt the great majority accept them are in the cemetery long ago, predominant I suppose the rest of us will connect them before long. Speaking for myself I erudition willing; in fact I believe I have bent willing ever since I was eighteen years old; not urgent, but willing, merely willing.

• The precede thing I ever noticed about Miss Lyon was her incredible laziness. Laziness was my own order, & I did not like this competition. Angel me, I was to find out, in distinction course of time, that in the matter pay for laziness I was a runaway train on a-one down grade & she a-standing still. At slump very laziest I could hear myself whiz, during the time that she was around.

• I like the truth then, but I don't care enough for it give up hanker after it. And besides, I have flybynight with liars so long that I have departed the tune, & a fact jars upon look forward to like a discord.

• ...a revolutionist in my emotion, by birth, by breeding and by principle. Distracted am always on the side of the revolutionists, because there never was a revolution unless down were some oppressive and intolerable conditions against which to revolute...

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