THURSDAY XIII:3 Mark Twain's Wit and Wisdom

I have engaged the services of a Mark Twain character interpreter for a school group and was remembering some of Twain's quotes. Here are some courtesy of Cadip Canada where I also downloaded the image:

I. Many public-school children seem to know only two dates--1492 and 4th of July; and as a rule they don't know what happened on either occasion....

II. Plan for the Improvement of English Spelling For example, in Year 1 that useless letter "c" would be dropped to be replased either by "k" or "s", and likewise "x" would no longer be part of the alphabet. The only kase in which "c" would be retained would be the "ch" formation, which will be dealt with later. Year 2 might reform "w" spelling, so that "which" and "one" would take the same konsonant, wile Year 3 might well abolish "y" replasing it with "i" and Iear 4 might fiks the "g/j" anomali wonse and for all....

III. Always do right. This will gratify some and astonish the rest....

IV. To get the right word in the right place is a rare achievement. To condense the diffused light of a page of thought into the luminous flash of a single sentence, is worthy to rank as a prize composition just by itself...Anybody can have ideas--the difficulty is to express them without squandering a quire of paper on an idea that ought to be reduced to one glittering paragraph....

V, Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover....

VI. If man could be crossed with the cat, it would improve man but deteriorate the cat....

VII, 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....

VIII. There was never yet an uninteresting life. Such a thing is an impossibility. Inside of the dullest exterior there is a drama, a comedy and a tragedy....

IX. Time and tide wait for no man. A pompous and self-satisfied proverb, and was true for a billion years; but in our day of electric wires and water-ballast we turn it around: Man waits not for time nor tide....

X. Truth is mighty and will prevail. There is nothing the matter with this, except that it ain't so....

XI. To arrive at a just estimate of a renowned man's character one must judge it by the standards of his time, not ours....

XII. The government is merely a servant -- merely a temporary servant; it cannot be its prerogative to determine what is right and what is wrong, and decide who is a patriot and who isn't. Its function is to obey orders, not originate them....

XIII. When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years....

Do you have any other favorite quotes?