Mark Twain Quotes

“Mark Twain was virtually alone among journalists in his reportage of Jewish Europeans as caught in the pincers of rising nationalist antagonisms.”
― Ron Powers, Mark Twain: A Life

“The Senate is now composed of a different material from what it once was. Its glory hath departed. Its halls no longer echo the words of a Clay, or Webster, or Calhoun . . . the void is felt.”
― Ron Powers, Mark Twain: A Life

“Sometimes my feelings are so hot that I have to take to the pen and pour them out on paper to keep them from setting me afire inside: then all that ink and labor are wasted, because I can’t print the result.”
― Ron Powers, Mark Twain: A Life

“Mr. Churchill by his father is an Englishman; by his mother he is an American; no doubt a blend that makes the perfect man. England and America: yes, we are kin. And now that we are also kin in sin, there is nothing more to be desired. The harmony is complete, the blend is perfect—like Mr. Churchill himself, whom I now have the honor to present to you.17”
― Ron Powers, Mark Twain: A Life

“But now—why, we have got into a mess, a quagmire from which each fresh step renders the difficulty of extrication immensely greater.”
― Ron Powers, Mark Twain: A Life

“Here was a demonstration of what Howells maintained—at just about this time—was his most liberating literary strength, his “single-minded use of words, which he employs as Grant did to express the plain, straight meaning their common acceptance has given them . . . He writes English as if it were a primitive and not a derivative language, without Gothic or Latin or Greek behind it.”13”
― Ron Powers, Mark Twain: A Life

“I am an anti-imperialist,” Mark Twain told the reporters at dockside. “I am opposed to having the eagle put its talons on any other land.”
― Ron Powers, Mark Twain: A Life

“am an anti-imperialist,” Mark Twain told the reporters at dockside. “I am opposed to having the eagle put its talons on any other land.”12”
― Ron Powers, Mark Twain: A Life

“Well, say, this beats croquet. There’s more go about it!”
― Ron Powers, Mark Twain: A Life

“At the ten-minute halftime, “with the figures standing 11 for Yale and 5 for Princeton, Mr. Clemens was one of the most eager of the mathematicians figuring how Princeton might yet pull the game out of the fire.” Princeton didn’t, but the reporter recorded the author’s color commentary on the first pigskin game he’d ever seen. “I should think they’d break every bone they ever had!”
― Ron Powers, Mark Twain: A Life

“The Chicago Tribune, noting that his entourage was among the last to disembark, quoted him as assuring some friends, “No, I didn’t get off on the other side of the boat.”1”
― Ron Powers, Mark Twain: A Life

“am quite sure that (bar one)II I have no race prejudices, and I think I have no color prejudices nor caste prejudices nor creed prejudices. All that I care to know is that a man is a human being—that is enough for me; he can’t be any worse.”
― Ron Powers, Mark Twain: A Life

“But as long as American civilisation lasts New York will last.”99”
― Ron Powers, Mark Twain: A Life

“He would rather decline 2 drinks than one German verb.”18”
― Ron Powers, Mark Twain: A Life

“The “captain” says that when I came to engage passage in the Quaker City I “seemed to be full of whiskey, or something,” and filled his office with the “fumes of bad whiskey” . . . [F]or a ceaseless, tireless, forty-year public advocate of total abstinence the “captain” is a mighty good judge of whiskey at second-hand.28”
― Ron Powers, Mark Twain: A Life

“He understood shock value: he frequently promised to demonstrate what he meant by “cannibalism” by eating a baby onstage, if someone would hand him one. No one ever did.”
― Ron Powers, Mark Twain: A Life

“Sam had laced nearly everything in the paper with his screwball wit—proposing in one news item that a newly enacted whiskey tax made it a patriotic duty to drink.)”
― Ron Powers, Mark Twain: A Life