It’s the 175th birthday of one of America’s most famous writers, Samuel Langhorne Clemens, better known by his nom de plume, Mark Twain. He was born on November 30, 1835 in Florida, Missouri. Mark Twain studied up to the fifth grade and quit school when his father died. He supported his family first as a typesetter and later as a riverboat captain until the Civil War broke out in 1861. He then headed west, worked as a miner, and eventually became a journalist. By 1866, Mark Twain had gained national fame as a humorist and travel writer.
Today, Mark Twain is much celebrated for, among many works, three novels that are often used as academic texts: “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” (1876), “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” (1885), and “Pudd’nhead Wilson” (1894), all of which are set in the Mississippi valley. Mark Twain’s writings are characterized by his natural wit, social criticism, and a keen understanding of human nature. Mark Twain toured widely as a renowned public speaker and continued to write until his death of a heart attack on April 21, 1910.
Further Reading
- The recently-released “Autobiography of Mark Twain”
- “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” (get a download for free)
- “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” (get a download for free)
- “Pudd’nhead Wilson” (get a download for free)
- “The Wit and Wisdom of Mark Twain”
Inspirational Quotations by Mark Twain
Each man must for himself alone decide what is right and what is wrong, which course is patriotic and which isn’t. You cannot shirk this and be a man. To decide against your conviction is to be an unqualified and inexcusable traitor, both to yourself and to your country, let men label you as they may.
—Mark Twain (American Humorist)
We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it—and stop there; lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot stove-lid. She will never sit down on a hot stove-lid again – and that is well; but also she will never sit down on a cold one anymore.
—Mark Twain (American Humorist)
Lord save us all from… a hope tree that has lost the faculty of putting out blossoms.
—Mark Twain (American Humorist)
Go to bed early, get up early—this is wise.
—Mark Twain (American Humorist)
Let us endeavor so to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.
—Mark Twain (American Humorist)
Praise is well, compliment is well, but affection-that is the last and most precious reward that any man can win, whether by character or achievement.
—Mark Twain (American Humorist)
I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened.
—Mark Twain (American Humorist)
Nothing that grieves us can be called little: by the eternal laws of proportion, a child’s loss of a doll and a king’s loss of a crown are events of the same size.
—Mark Twain (American Humorist)