Archives for November 2010

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)

That which we persist in doing becomes easier – not that the nature of the task has changed, but our ability to do has increased.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (American Philosopher)

Men spend their lives in anticipations, in determining to be vastly happy at some period when they have time. But the present time has one advantage over every other—it is our own. Past opportunities are gone, future are not come. We may lay in a stock of pleasures, as we would lay in a stock of wine; but if we defer the tasting of them too long, we shall find that both are soured by age.
—Charles Caleb Colton (English Angelic Priest)

And even if you were in some prison, the walls of which let none of the sounds of the world come to your senses – would you not then still have your childhood, that precious, kingly possession, that treasure-house of memories?
—Rainer Maria Rilke (Austrian Poet)

Anger is foremost enemy of humankind, which inherently resides within oneself only to destroy him, just like fire which is enkindled by a piece of wood ends up burning the piece.
—Subhashita Manjari

I can live without money, but I cannot live without love.
—Judy Garland

I believe in work, hard work, and long hours of work. Men do not breakdown from overwork, but from worry and dissipation.
—Charles Evans Hughes (American Elected Rep)

It is easier to act yourself into a better way of feeling than to feel yourself into a better way of action.
—Orval Hobart Mowrer (American Psychologist)

Authors and lovers always suffer some infatuation, from which only absence can set them free.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

The world is satisfied with words, few care to dive beneath the surface.
—Blaise Pascal (French Catholic Mathematician)

Who makes quick use of the moment, is a genius of prudence.
—Johann Kaspar Lavater (Swiss Christian Poet)

Money is power, freedom, a cushion, the root of all evil, the sum of blessings.
—Carl Sandburg (American Children’s Books Writer)

Do your little bit of good where you are; it’s those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world.
—Desmond Tutu (South African Anglican Priest)

Almost all of the world-class athletes and other peak performers are visualizers. They see it; they feel it; they experience it before they actually do it. They begin with the end in mind.
—Stephen Covey (American Management Consultant)

I never enter a new company without the hope that I may discover a friend, perhaps the friend, sitting there with an expectant smile. That hope survives a thousand disappointments.
—A. C. Benson (English Essayist)

Let us remember that the times which future generations delight to recall are not those of ease and prosperity, but those of adversity bravely borne.
—Charles William Eliot (American Educator)

Justice is the tolerable accommodation of the conflicting interests of society, and I don’t believe there is any royal road to attain such accommodation concretely.
—Learned Hand

And a beautiful world we live in, when it is possible, and when many other such things are possible, and not only possible, but done under that sky there, every day.
—Charles Dickens (English Novelist)

Families with babies and families without babies are sorry for each other.
—E. W. Howe (American Novelist)

When you are genuinely strong, you neither attack nor defend and so retain your energy.
—Vernon Howard

Money is multiplied in practical value depending on the number of W’s you control in your life: what you do, when you do it, where you do it, and with whom you do it. I call this the freedom multiplier.
—Tim Ferriss

An idea that is developed and put into action is more important than an idea that exists only as an idea.
—Edward de Bono (Maltese Physician)