mark twain, quotes, quotes, quotes

2

Click here to load reader

Upload: sarah-lunsford

Post on 30-May-2018

221 views

Category:

Documents


0 download

TRANSCRIPT

Page 1: Mark Twain, Quotes, Quotes, Quotes

8/9/2019 Mark Twain, Quotes, Quotes, Quotes

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/mark-twain-quotes-quotes-quotes 1/2

Word count: 1105

By Sarah Lunsford

Quotes, quotes, and more quotes. Today a celebrity of any kind can hardly get away withanything without finding themselves in quotes, and back in the days that newspapersruled the world, back in the days of Mark Twain, a.k.a. Samuel Langhorne Clemens, thethirst for tidbits from celebrities was arguably just as voracious as it is now.International celebrity of the written word Twain himself was no exception to the

public’s thirst for a little something from their favorite celebrity. And, he was sure not todisappoint. He was such a prolific writer and lecturer that even today there’s a thought or two that there are many more of his works out there floating around in the obscurity of newsprint and peoples basements that have yet to be uncovered.

Not only was he prolific, he was opinionated. No shirking flower, Twain had opinions

about almost everything and made them known in his books, his lectures, his editorials,letters to the editor and in personal correspondence. And, one must surmise, in person aswell.Maybe this bent for sharing his opinions, whether they were asked for or not, came fromworking as a journalist. A field in which objectivity is the key, but because of its verynature, writers ends up with so much information they can’t help but have their own verystrong opinions about things.His work as a journalist would have given him an objective viewpoint and an eye todetail that would allow him to see things that others may have missed, then interpretthose actions and ideas in ways that allowed him to form, and comment on, the state of life as it was then and how, given human nature, it would most likely continue to be.

This insight added to his reputation as a humorist, satirist and commentator on life.“Authorship is not a trade, it is an inspiration; authorship does not keep an office, itshabitation is all out under the sky, and everywhere the winds are blowing and the sun isshining and the creatures of God are free. “ He wrote to the Queen of England in 1887when he was asking for an exemption from English tax on royalties.Of course this insightful nature didn’t always help him in the speculative market (he was

plagued with largely self created financial problems), but it does help us understand whyhe said the things he said.“Experience is an author's most valuable asset; experience is the thing that puts themuscle and the breath and the warm blood into the book he writes.”Wrote Twain in, “Is Shakespeare Dead”.Experience was something Twain had in ample supply. It was that variety of experiencethat allowed him to richly cloth his characters and their environments so they are stillrelevant today.He traveled the world, working as a journalist, steamship driver, speculator – making afortune off of a patent for the scrapbook – and even had a failed stint as a miner.Probably it was this stint as a miner, amongst other western endeavors, that led him tomake this observation about gold in his book “Roughing It” that chronicled his years inthe West:

Page 2: Mark Twain, Quotes, Quotes, Quotes

8/9/2019 Mark Twain, Quotes, Quotes, Quotes

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/mark-twain-quotes-quotes-quotes 2/2

“Moralizing, I observed, then, that ‘all that glitters is not gold.Mr. Ballou said I could go further than that, and lay it up among my treasures of knowledge, that nothing that glitters is gold. So I learned then, once for all, that gold inits native state is but dull, unornamental stuff, and that only lowborn metals excite theadmiration of the ignorant with an ostentatious glitter. However, like the rest of the

world, I still go on underrating men of gold and glorifying men of mica. Commonplacehuman nature cannot rise above that.”Twain was a great commentator on the many aspects of human nature. With his quick witand great insight he was able to convey this immutable nature and its many quirksthrough words that sit on top of a foundation of diamond edged reality.His play, “Is He Dead?” is about a painter who, along with his friends, fakes his owndeath so he will sell more paintings.This play illustrates, in a very direct fashion, the truth that sometimes artists are worthmore dead than alive, pointing to the weird dynamic of human nature that whensomething is gone and nothing more can be gotten from it, that it is of far greater worththan when it is alive and producing.

It was rediscovered and brought out of mothballs just recently by the scholar ShelleyFisher Fishkin. She was digging away in the Mark Twain Papers at the University of California, Berkeley in 2002 and found the manuscript. It was published in 2003 and wasdebuted on Broadway in 2007.Ironically enough, during Twains own life there were times when his own death wasmisreported.“It has been reported that I was seriously ill--it was another man; dying--it was another man; dead--the other man again...As far as I can see, nothing remains to be reported,except that I have become a foreigner. When you hear it, don't you believe it. And don'ttake the trouble to deny it. Merely just raise the American flag on our house in Hartfordand let it talk” He wrote in a letter to Frank E. Bliss on November 14,1897.“Is He Dead?’ was written in 1898 and one must wonder if its creation was indeed aresult of the reports about his death and the logical conclusion that he and his work mighthave been worth more dead than alive.True? Well, 100-years after his death, a first edition of “The Adventures of HuckleberryFinn” in good condition has an asking price of almost $6,000 which is not badconsidering that books typically do not fetch a lot on the secondary market no matter whothey’re written by.This is in addition to the fact his books are still being printed and distributed all over theworld. Books like Huckleberry are part of the literary canon and are taught in all levels of the educational system, from grade school all the way up through university.Twain has left a legacy that is larger than just the amount of money his work did, and stilldoes, fetch. It is a legacy of the word, written and spoken, that each subsequentgeneration can discover and identify with.And what did he say about himself?“I have been an author for 20 years and an ass for 55.” Mark Twain he wrote in a“Biography”.A statement that is typically Mark Twain.