Mark Twain Today

The right word may be effective, but no word was ever as effective as a rightly timed pause. Mark Twain

2010-03-12T13:27:00.000-05:00

The right word may be effective, but no word was ever as effective as a rightly timed pause.

Mark Twain

"Action speaks louder than words but not nearly as often." Mark Twain

2010-03-12T08:44:00.000-05:00

Action speaks louder than words but not nearly as often.

Mark Twain

My friend Gaye Anne on twitter (http://twitter.com/gayea) brought this quote to mind yesterday afternoon.

It is one of those Twainisms which speaks loudly in just a few words, and one that we all know is a truth.

One bad action can nullify a million good words and it takes forever to rebuild trust, if it ever can be.

A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way. Mark Twain

2010-03-12T08:40:00.000-05:00

A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way.

Mark Twain

I don't recommend doing this one at home folks. My cats are fickle enough without giving them something new to claw me about. They usually don't need any motivation, they just seem to have moods....

Cats like people just have that certain look at times that says, "I want to rip you to shreads". While most people will not follow through with the threat, most cats will.

"The very ink with which history is written is merely fluid prejudice". Mark Twain

2010-03-11T14:00:00.000-05:00

The very ink with which history is written is merely fluid prejudice. Mark Twain

"The more things are forbidden, the more popular they become". Mark Twain

2010-03-11T12:00:00.000-05:00

The more things are forbidden, the more popular they become.

Mark Twain

"Sometimes too much to drink is barely enough". Mark Twain

2010-03-11T10:04:00.000-05:00

Sometimes too much to drink is barely enough. Mark Twain

Mark Twain Anniversary Approaches - January Magazine

2010-03-10T13:34:00.000-05:00

With the 100 year anniversary of the death of Mark Twain coming up on April 10, look for armloads of books to be published or republished with a Twainish theme between now and then. A couple of good ones recently became available from The Library of America.

The Mark Twain Anthology collects the work of great writers on the topic of Twain. “Several of Mark Twain’s books are bound to survive,” George Orwell opined, “because they contain invaluable social history.”

(Read more here)

Patriot: the person who can holler the loudest without knowing what he is hollering about.- Mark Twain

2010-03-10T13:30:00.000-05:00

Patriot: the person who can holler the loudest without knowing what he is hollering about. Mark Twain

The lack of money is the root of all evil. Mark Twain

2010-03-09T08:08:00.002-05:00

The lack of money is the root of all evil. Mark Twain

If you spend anytime on the internet, you'll find that it is full of money making schemes that seem too good to be true.

Mark Twain lost tons of money investing in questionable enterprises... make sure that before you invest in anything, that you research it and make sure that it is legit.

If it looks too good to be true, it probably is.

Clothes make the man. -- Mark Twain

2010-03-09T08:07:00.000-05:00

Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.

-- Mark Twain

Humor is mankind's greatest blessing. Mark Twain

2010-03-08T09:19:00.000-05:00

Humor is mankind's greatest blessing. Mark Twain

When life gets difficult, it is important to try to be able to keep a positive outlook on life. When we realize how crazy the world really is, it is easier to live through the day-to-day problems and issues we face.

Take a moment to enjoy some humor today. Smile and share that smile with someone else.

A person who won't read has no advantage over one who can't read. Mark Twain

2010-03-08T09:02:00.000-05:00

A person who won't read has no advantage over one who can't read.

Mark Twain

This to me has always meant that it is important to take the time to stay informed. Whether this is learning from a classic, or reading the news from the internet, it is our responsiblity to stay informed and learn.

Facts are stubborn, but statistics are more pliable. Mark Twain

2010-03-07T16:54:00.000-05:00

Facts are stubborn, but statistics are more pliable. Mark Twain

When we're watching the news or reading the paper, it seems that everything is based on statistical information. However, how accurate or meaningful are the statistics that they are using? Just because 50% of the people like something doesn't mean it is right, etc...

Mark Twain - Advertising

2010-03-07T16:51:00.002-05:00

Many a small thing has been made large by the right kind of advertising - Mark Twain

"It's Lovely to live on a raft" - Mark Twain - Huck Finn

2010-03-07T09:00:00.000-05:00

"It's lovely to live on a raft. We had the sky up there, all speckled with stars, and we used to lay on our backs and look up at them, and discuss about whether they was made or only just happened."

- The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain

Was Mark Twain the Original American Roadtripper and Travelblogger?

2010-03-06T09:15:00.000-05:00

Hope you'll read my latest article on Examiner.com where I discuss Mark Twain's travel books and whether or not this makes him the original American Roadtripper and Travelblogger.

The newspaper columns he wrote were the travel blogs of his day. He wrote about the people he met, the sites he saw, and he brought it home to a nation of readers back in the US. These stories were collected and published in books which became the classics such as Innocents Abroad, Following the Equator, A Tramp Abroad and Roughing It.

Mark Twain - Forgiveness

2010-03-06T08:21:00.000-05:00

Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it. Mark Twain

St. Louis Cardinals manager Tony La Russa on attack over Mark McGwire (Article Link)

2010-03-05T11:42:00.000-05:00

PORT ST. LUCIE - Cardinals manager Tony La Russa doesn't have a high opinion of the state officials who decided to strip Mark McGwire's name from a stretch of Interstate 70 in Missouri. The state senate and house this week voted to rename the stretch "Mark Twain Highway."

McGwire received the honor a year after belting a record 70 homers in 1998, but he has since admitted steroid use.

"Shouldn't it have always been the Mark Twain Highway?" La Russa said Thursday, before the Mets faced the Cardinals. "I liked what Mark (McGwire) said about just being happy to have had it for 10 years. But isn't this typical of politicians? This is why the public views them with such low regard."

ROFL: "The Adventures of Huckleberry Mac"

2010-03-05T11:37:00.000-05:00

ROFL... the latest shots in the effort to get the highway in Missouri named back to Mark Twain.

Love the new article..

News item: The Missouri Senate voted unanimously to rename a stretch of I-70 in St. Louis from Mark McGwire Highway to Mark Twain Highway. The measure now goes to the House ...

The Adventures of Huckleberry Mac
Chapter 1

You don't know about me without you have driven on a road by the name the Mark McGwire Highway in St. Louis; but that ain't no matter anymore, on account the Missouri Senate voted to rename it for Mr. Mark Twain this week. They had been talking about this ever since the book "Juiced'' was made by Jose Canseco. He told the truth mainly, but there were some stretchers in his book, like him and me taking a dead cat to the graveyard and running off to be Pittsburgh Pirates and injecting syringes full of steroids into each other in a cave. But that is nothing. I never seen anybody but lied one time or another, without it was Ozzie Guillen.

Plymouth Rock and the Pilgrims - Mark Twain

2010-03-05T09:00:00.002-05:00

PLYMOUTH ROCK AND THE PILGRIMS

ADDRESS AT THE FIRST ANNUAL DINNER, N. E. SOCIETY,

PHILADELPHIA, DECEMBER 22, 1881

On calling upon Mr. Clemens to make response, President Rollins said:

"This sentiment has been assigned to one who was never exactly

born in New England, nor, perhaps, were any of his ancestors.

He is not technically, therefore, of New England descent.

Under the painful circumstances in which he has found himself,

however, he has done the best he could--he has had all his

children born there, and has made of himself a New England

ancestor. He is a self-made man. More than this, and better

even, in cheerful, hopeful, helpful literature he is of New

England ascent. To ascend there in any thing that's reasonable

is difficult; for--confidentially, with the door shut--we all

know that they are the brightest, ablest sons of that goodly

land who never leave it, and it is among and above them that

Mr. Twain has made his brilliant and permanent ascent--become

a man of mark."

I rise to protest. I have kept still for years; but really I think there is no sufficient justification for this sort of thing. What do you want to celebrate those people for?--those ancestors of yours of 1620--the Mayflower tribe, I mean. What do you want to celebrate them for? Your pardon: the gentleman at my left assures me that you are not celebrating
the Pilgrims themselves, but the landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth rock on the 22d of December. So you are celebrating their landing. Why, the other pretext was thin enough, but this is thinner than ever; the other was tissue, tinfoil, fish-bladder, but this is gold-leaf.

Celebrating their lauding! What was there remarkable about it, I would like to know?

What can you be thinking of? Why, those Pilgrims had been at sea three or four months. It was the very middle of winter: it was as cold as death off Cape Cod there. Why shouldn't they come ashore? If they hadn't landed there would be some reason for celebrating the fact: It would have been a case of monumental leatherheadedness which the world
would not willingly let die. If it had been you, gentlemen, you probably wouldn't have landed, but you have no shadow of right to be celebrating, in your ancestors, gifts which they did not exercise, but only transmitted. Why, to be celebrating the mere landing of the Pilgrims --to be trying to make out that this most natural and simple and customary procedure was an extraordinary circumstance--a circumstance to be amazed at, and admired, aggrandized and glorified, at orgies like this for two hundred and sixty years--hang it, a horse would have known enough to land; a horse--Pardon again; the gentleman on my right assures me that it was not merely the landing of the Pilgrims that we are celebrating, but the Pilgrims themselves. So we have struck an inconsistency here
--one says it was the landing, the other says it was the Pilgrims. It is an inconsistency characteristic of your intractable and disputatious tribe, for you never agree about anything but Boston. Well, then, what do you want to celebrate those Pilgrims for? They were a mighty hard lot--you know it. I grant you, without the slightest unwillingness, that they were a deal more gentle and merciful and just than were the people of Europe of that day; I grant you that they are better than their predecessors. But what of that?--that is nothing.

People always progress. You are better than your fathers and grandfathers were (this is the first time I have ever aimed a measureless slander at the departed, for I consider such things improper). Yes, those among you who have not been in the penitentiary, if such there be, are better than your fathers and grandfathers were; but is that any sufficient reason, for getting up annual dinners and celebrating you? No, by no means--by no means. Well, I repeat, those Pilgrims were a hard lot. They took good care of themselves, but they abolished everybody else's ancestors.

I am a border-ruffian from the State of Missouri. I am a Connecticut Yankee by adoption. In me, you have Missouri morals, Connecticut culture; this, gentlemen, is the combination which makes the perfect man. But where are my ancestors? Whom shall I celebrate? Where shall I find the raw material?

My first American ancestor, gentlemen, was an Indian--an early Indian. Your ancestors skinned him alive, and I am an orphan. Not one drop of my blood flows in that Indian's veins today. I stand here, lone and forlorn, without an ancestor. They skinned him! I do not object to that, if they needed his fur; but alive, gentlemen-alive! They skinned him alive--and before company! That is what rankles. Think how he must have felt; for he was a sensitive person and easily embarrassed. If he had been a bird, it would have been all right, and no violence done to his feelings, because he would have been considered "dressed." But he was not a bird, gentlemen, he was a man, and probably one of the most undressed men that ever was. I ask you to put yourselves in his place.

I ask it as a favor; I ask it as a tardy act of justice; I ask it in the interest of fidelity to the traditions of your ancestors; I ask it that the world may contemplate, with vision nobstructed by disguising swallow-tails and white cravats, the spectacle which the true New England Society ought to present. Cease to come to these annual orgies in this hollow modern mockery--the surplusage of raiment. Come in character; come in the summer grace, come in the unadorned simplicity, come in the free and joyous costume which your sainted ancestors provided for mine.

Later ancestors of mine were the Quakers William Robinson, Marmaduke Stevenson, et al. Your tribe chased them put of the country for their religion's sake; promised them death if they came back; for your ancestors had forsaken the homes they loved, and braved the perils of the sea, the implacable climate, and the savage wilderness, to acquire that highest and most precious of boons, freedom for every man on this broad continent to worship according to the dictates of his own conscience--and they were not going to allow a lot of pestiferous Quakers to interfere with it. Your ancestors broke forever the chains of political slavery, and gave the vote to every man in this wide land, excluding none!--none except those who did not belong to the orthodox church. Your ancestors --yes, they were a hard lot; but, nevertheless, they gave us religious liberty to worship as they required us to worship, and political liberty to vote as the church required; and so I the bereft one, I the forlorn one, am here to do my best to help you celebrate them right.

The Quaker woman Elizabeth Hooton was an ancestress of mine. Your people were pretty severe with her you will confess that. But, poor thing! I believe they changed her opinions before she died, and took her into their fold; and so we have every reason to presume that when she died she went to the same place which your ancestors went to. It is a great pity,
for she was a good woman. Roger Williams was an ancestor of mine. I don't really remember what your people did with him. But they banished him to Rhode Island, anyway.

And then, I believe, recognizing that this was really carrying harshness to an unjustifiable extreme, they took pity on him and burned him. They were a hard lot! All those Salem witches were ancestors of mine! Your people made it tropical for them. Yes, they did; by pressure and the gallows they made such a clean deal with them that there hasn't been a witch and hardly a halter in our family from that day to this, and that is one hundred and eighty-nine years.

The first slave brought into New England out of Africa by your progenitors was an ancestor of mine--for I am of a mixed breed, an infinitely shaded and exquisite Mongrel. I'm not one of your sham meerschaums that you can color in a week. No, my complexion is the patient art of eight generations. Well, in my own time, I had acquired a lot of my kin--by purchase, and swapping around, and one way and another --and was getting along very well. Then, with the inborn perversity of your lineage, you got up a war, and took them all away from me. And so, again am I bereft, again am I forlorn; no drop of my blood flows in the
veins of any living being who is marketable.

O my friends, hear me and reform! I seek your good, not mine. You have heard the speeches. Disband these New England societies--nurseries of a system of steadily augmenting laudation and hosannaing, which; if persisted in uncurbed, may some day in the remote future beguile you into prevaricating and bragging. Oh, stop, stop, while you are still temperate in your appreciation of your ancestors! Hear me, I beseech you; get up an auction and sell Plymouth Rock! The Pilgrims were a simple and ignorant race. They never had seen any good rocks before, or at least any that were not watched, and so they were excusable for hopping ashore in frantic delight and clapping an iron fence around this one.

But you, gentlemen, are educated; you are enlightened; you know that in the rich land of your nativity, opulent New England, overflowing with rocks, this one isn't worth, at the outside, more than thirty-five cents. Therefore, sell it, before it is injured by exposure, or at least throw it open to the patent-medicine advertisements, and let it earn its taxes:

Yes, hear your true friend-your only true friend--list to his voice.

Disband these societies, hotbeds of vice, of moral decay--perpetuators of ancestral superstition. Here on this board I see water, I see milk, I see the wild and deadly lemonade. These are but steps upon the downward path. Next we shall see tea, then chocolate, then coffee--hotel coffee.

A few more years--all too few, I fear--mark my words, we shall have cider! Gentlemen, pause ere it be too late. You are on the broad road which leads to dissipation, physical ruin, moral decay, gory crime and the gallows! I beseech you, I implore you, in the name of your anxious friends, in the name of your suffering families, in the name of your impending widows and orphans, stop ere it be too late. Disband these New England societies, renounce these soul-blistering saturnalia, cease from varnishing the rusty reputations of your long-vanished ancestors--the super-high-moral old iron-clads of Cape Cod, the pious buccaneers of Plymouth Rock--go home, and try to learn to behave!

However, chaff and nonsense aside, I think I honor and appreciate your Pilgrim stock as much as you do yourselves, perhaps; and I endorse and adopt a sentiment uttered by a grandfather of mine once--a man of sturdy opinions, of sincere make of mind, and not given to flattery. He said:

"People may talk as they like about that Pilgrim stock, but, after all's said and done, it would be pretty hard to improve on those people; and, as for me, I don't mind coming out flatfooted and saying there ain't any way to improve on them--except having them born in, Missouri!"

(From Mark Twain Speeches)

Mark Twain and Forbidden Fruit.

2010-03-04T13:54:00.000-05:00

There is a charm about the forbidden that makes it unspeakably desirable.

Mark Twain

Isn't this the truth? Something that is not good for us seems like what we have to have?

We're trying to diet, but that Chocolate looks so good?

"No one will ever know what pay-per-view movie I watch" at the motel?

"Everyone speeds"

Etc..etc..

Ever since Adam and Eve there has been forbidden things which humans have longed for. Also since the first couple, people have given into those temptations.

Does removing the vice make something less desired? Prohibition in America failed partially because people found other ways to get the booze. Does prohibiting smoking before 18 makes teens more likely to light up? How about illegal drugs? Would legalizing Pot make it less tempting?

I'm sure as long as there are humans.. there will be temptation to eat "the forbidden fruit"

Mark Twain on the Weather (A speech)

2010-03-04T12:00:00.002-05:00

ADDRESS AT THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY'S SEVENTY FIRST
ANNUAL DINNER, NEW YORK CITY

The next toast was: "The Oldest Inhabitant-The Weather of New England."

"Who can lose it and forget it?
Who can have it and regret it?
Be interposer 'twixt us Twain."
--Merchant of Venice.

I reverently believe that the Maker who made us all makes everything in New England but the weather. I don't know who makes that, but I think it must be raw apprentices in the weather-clerk's factory who experiment and learn how, in New England, for board and clothes, and then are promoted to make weather for countries that require a good article, and will take their custom elsewhere if they don't get it. There is a sumptuous variety about the New England weather that compels the stranger's admiration--and regret. The weather is always doing something there; always attending strictly to business; always getting up new designs and trying them on the people to see how they will go. But it gets through more business in spring than in any other season. In the spring I have counted one hundred and thirty-six different kinds of weather inside of four-and-twenty hours. It was I that made the fame and fortune of that man that had that marvellous collection of weather on exhibition at the Centennial, that so astounded the foreigners. He was going to travel all over the world and get specimens from all the climes. I said, "Don't you do it; you come to New England on a favorable spring day." I told him what we could do in the way of style, variety, and quantity. Well, he came and he made his collection in four days. As to variety, why, he confessed that he got hundreds of kinds of weather that he had never heard of before. And as to quantity well, after he had picked out and discarded all that was blemished in any way, he not only had weather enough, but weather to spare; weather to hire out; weather to sell; to deposit; weather to invest; weather to give to the poor. The people of New England are by nature patient and forbearing, but there are some things which they will not stand. Every year they kill a lot of poets for writing about "Beautiful Spring." These are generally casual visitors, who bring their notions of spring from somewhere else, and cannot, of course, know how the natives feel about spring. And so the first thing they know the opportunity to inquire how they feel has permanently gone by. Old Probabilities has a mighty reputation for accurate prophecy, and thoroughly well deserves it. You take up the paper and observe how crisply and confidently he checks off what to-day's
weather is going to be on the Pacific, down South, in the Middle States, in the Wisconsin region. See him sail along in the joy and pride of his power till he gets to New England, and then see his tail drop. He doesn't know what the weather is going to be in New England. Well, he mulls over it, and by and-by he gets out something about like this: Probably northeast to southwest winds, varying to the southward and westward and eastward, and points between, high and low barometer swapping around from place to place; probable areas of rain, snow, hail, and drought, succeeded or preceded by earthquakes, with thunder and lightning. Then he jots down his postscript from his wandering mind, to cover accidents. "But it is possible that the programme may be wholly changed in the mean time." Yes, one of the brightest gems in the New England weather is the dazzling uncertainty of it. There is only one thing certain about it: you are certain there is going to be plenty of it--a perfect grand review; but you never can tell which end of the procession is going to move first. You fix up for the drought; you leave your umbrella in the house and sally out, and two to one you get drowned. You make up your mind that the earthquake is due; you stand from under, and take hold of something to steady yourself, and the first
thing you know you get struck by lightning. These are great disappointments; but they can't be helped. The lightning there is peculiar; it is so convincing, that when it strikes a thing it doesn't leave enough of that thing behind for you to tell whether--Well, you'd think it was something valuable, and a Congressman had been there. And the thunder. When the thunder begins to merely tune up and scrape and saw, and key up the instruments for the performance, strangers say, "Why, what awful thunder you have here!" But when the baton is raised and the real concert begins, you'll find that stranger down in the cellar with his head in the ash-barrel. Now as to the size of the weather in New England--lengthways, I can. It is utterly disproportioned to the size of that little country. Half the time, when it is packed as full as it can stick, you will see that New England weather sticking out beyond
the edges and projecting around hundreds and hundreds of miles over the neighboring States. She can't hold a tenth part of her weather. You can see cracks all about where she has strained herself trying to do it. I could speak volumes about the inhuman perversity of the New England weather, but I will give but a single specimen. I like to hear rain on a
tin roof. So I covered part of my roof with tin, with an eye to that luxury. Well, sir, do you think it ever rains on that tin? No, sir; skips it every time. Mind, in this speech I have been trying merely to do honor to the New England weather--no language could do it justice.
But, after all, there is at least one or two things about that weather (or, if you please, effects produced by it) which we residents would not like to part with. If we hadn't our bewitching autumn foliage, we should still have to credit the weather with one feature which compensates for all its bullying vagaries--the ice-storm: when a leafless tree is clothed
with ice from the bottom to the top--ice that is as bright and clear as crystal; when every bough and twig is strung with ice-beads, frozen dew-drops, and the whole tree sparkles cold and white, like the Shah of Persia's diamond plume. Then the wind waves the branches and the sun comes out and turns all those myriads of beads and drops to prisms that glow and burn and flash with all manner of colored fires, which change and change again with inconceivable rapidity from blue to red, from red to green, and green to gold--the tree becomes a spraying fountain, a very explosion of dazzling jewels; and it stands there the acme, the climax, the supremest possibility in art or nature, of bewildering, intoxicating,
intolerable magnificence. One cannot make the words too strong.

Mark Twain's smoking advice for President Obama

2010-03-03T08:49:00.000-05:00

Giving up smoking is the easiest thing in the world. I know because I've done it thousands of times. Mark Twain

The USA Today reports that the President is still having problems kicking the habit.

It seems President Obama, reformed cigarette smoker, is having trouble completely kicking the habit.

Echoing Obama's comments on the tobacco topic in June, spokesman Robert Gibbs said the president occasionally "falls off the wagon," just like others who have struggled to quit smoking for good.

Mark Twain attempted to quit smoking.. like his famous quote says.. thousands of times. He even said:

I make it a rule never to smoke while I'm sleeping. Mark Twain

which is great advice, since it helps to keep from burning the house down, and we sure don't want that to happen to the White House.

Hal Hollbrook, whose protrayal of Twain is legendary has a great monologue about smoking where he anticipates many of the anti-smoking campaigns that we see today.

All kidding aside, doctor's agree that quitting smoking is a good thing. Doctors Tell Obama to "Quit Smoking, Drinking So Much" , so I do wish him the best in kicking the habit.

Mark Twain on Travel and Bigotry - #TravelTuesday

2010-03-02T09:01:00.000-05:00

"Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts." Mark Twain

Mark Twain was the original travel blogger. His accounts published in the Innocents Abroad, Following the Equator and other books read just like a good travel blog.

Twain told it like it was. He used his wit and sarcasm to pick at the trivial while highlighting the gems that he found. He realized that the "American" view was not the only view out there.

Travellers today can still learn from the Master.

Travel Agents Still Prove Valuable in the Digital Age : Article Link

2010-03-01T10:00:00.000-05:00

Mark Twain was famously quoted as saying,“The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.” CEO Tama Holve of Willett Travel in Studio City has adapted this quote when she teaches her five students at the Willett Travel Academy, a small class she teaches to future agents making career switches if they give her a one-year comittment to the company. She tells them “the demise of the travel agency has been exaggerated.”

Read More at:

http://www.sfvbj.com/industry_article_pay.asp?aID=145263