RubySoho
Winston
Why I Love Mark Twain
March 17th 2008 23:32
I’m a sucker for good quotes. Particularly off the cuff one liners whose biting sarcasm leave you shaking your head, both in awe at the wit of the speaker and in sympathy for the hapless individual who is unfortunate enough to be on the receiving end. Some of my all time favourite quotes are:
Lady Margot Asquith to screen goddess Jean Harlow, who kept referring to her as MarGOT (erroneously pronouncing the silent ‘t’):
“No, Jean the T is silent, as in Harlow”
And when the one and only Dorothy Parker was asked to put the term 'haute couture’ in a sentence, she came up with this absolute gem:
“You can lead a haute couture, but you can’t make her think”.
Dorothy Parker certainly ranks amongst the most quotable figures in history, in the same league as Oscar Wilde whose spot on quotes:
“a man can be happy with any woman as long as he does not love her”
and
“Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it
every six months”
show such a relevant insight into the nature of humans and their attitudes to appearance and relationships, that they could just as easily have been written today.
I could quote Oscar until the cows come home (and often have), but when it comes to my all time favourite quotable quotes, no-one can beat Samuel Clements, a.k.a the indomitable Mark Twain. For me the hallmarks of a good quote are an excellent grasp of language, a keen understanding of human nature, political and/or social relevance, a willingness and ability to subvert expectations, and, of course, humour.
Mark Twain had these in spades. Here is a collection of my all time favourite quotes from the great man and why I think they still resonate all these years later.
"Patriot: the person who can holler the loudest without knowing what he is hollering about".
Aussie! Aussie! Aussie! Oi!!! Oi!!! Oi!!!
USA! USA! USA!
The first of April is the day we remember what we are the other 364 days of the year.
Enough said. We are all fools but are never willing to admit it. We need to stop taking ourselves so seriously.
The more things are forbidden, the more popular they become.
Will someone declare that the War on Drugs is lost already?
The rule is perfect: in all matters of opinion our adversaries are insane
Just go to any political blog, no matter whether it is Left or Right and read the comments section.
Thousands of geniuses live and die undiscovered - either by themselves or by others.
So many people will either never get their ‘big break’, or even acknowledge their own worth. My sister is one of the most intelligent people I know and she doesn’t even know it.
We are all alike, on the inside.
One of my favourites. Sting reworked this idea in his haunting eighties ballad The Russisans, where he laments that “we share the same biology, regardless of ideology”. This, of course, is lost on so many people who insisted on viewing Communists and now Muslims as ‘The Other’. No, humans will never learn. Just accept that as a fact.
When a person cannot deceive himself the chances are against his being able to deceive other people.
Religious and political extremism still runs rampant, largely because the leaders actually believe what they say they believe. I’m sure in his own mind, Bush has convinced himself that he is saving the world from “terror”. And it works. Just witness the abundance of right wing websites and blogs that insist “the surge is working! The surge is working!” Sigh. Humans will never learn...Oh I’ve said that already.
Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.
Question everything. Don’t ever take things for granted, especially something as obscure and intangible as ‘truth’.
A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.
Weapons of mass destruction, anyone?
Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured.
Once again, I invite you to visit politically extreme website and witness the way in which anger is damaging the individuals who harbour it and how it is turning them in shells of human beings. What kind of a life can you have if your waking moments are spent spitting vitriol at other human beings? If your day consists of looking for Reds under your beds and turbans in your backyard?
Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint.
Ah, yes. Here Twain directs our attention to our human capacity to believe whatever we read and whatever we are told. I am reminded of a story I heard not long after 9/11 when anti-Muslim hysteria was at a peak and in a tragic case of mistaken identity a Sikh man was murdered by an American patriot because, well he was wearing a turban and only Muslims wear turbans right? And since Muslims are now the enemy they all deserve to die.
I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.
Why do humans so fear non-existence, even though it is from whence we came, that we have to invent fairytales, in which we incredibly survive our own deaths and party in the sky with our 'creator' for all eternity? We didn't exist before we were born, why should we exist after we die?
Wit is the sudden marriage of ideas which before their union were not perceived to have any relation.
Twain is demonstrating why he himself was so witty and why, so many decades later, he is still so relevant. Look back over the quotes I have provided and marvel, as I do, at the way he combines ideas in a way that seem so effortless but which force us to see the world in a different way, or at least understand it a little better.
And at the same time make us laugh.
If anyone would care to share, I would love to hear some of your favourite quotes and what makes them so.
Lady Margot Asquith to screen goddess Jean Harlow, who kept referring to her as MarGOT (erroneously pronouncing the silent ‘t’):
“No, Jean the T is silent, as in Harlow”
And when the one and only Dorothy Parker was asked to put the term 'haute couture’ in a sentence, she came up with this absolute gem:
“You can lead a haute couture, but you can’t make her think”.
Dorothy Parker certainly ranks amongst the most quotable figures in history, in the same league as Oscar Wilde whose spot on quotes:
“a man can be happy with any woman as long as he does not love her”
and
“Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it
every six months”
show such a relevant insight into the nature of humans and their attitudes to appearance and relationships, that they could just as easily have been written today.
I could quote Oscar until the cows come home (and often have), but when it comes to my all time favourite quotable quotes, no-one can beat Samuel Clements, a.k.a the indomitable Mark Twain. For me the hallmarks of a good quote are an excellent grasp of language, a keen understanding of human nature, political and/or social relevance, a willingness and ability to subvert expectations, and, of course, humour.
Mark Twain had these in spades. Here is a collection of my all time favourite quotes from the great man and why I think they still resonate all these years later.
"Patriot: the person who can holler the loudest without knowing what he is hollering about".
Aussie! Aussie! Aussie! Oi!!! Oi!!! Oi!!!
USA! USA! USA!
The first of April is the day we remember what we are the other 364 days of the year.
Enough said. We are all fools but are never willing to admit it. We need to stop taking ourselves so seriously.
The more things are forbidden, the more popular they become.
Will someone declare that the War on Drugs is lost already?
The rule is perfect: in all matters of opinion our adversaries are insane
Just go to any political blog, no matter whether it is Left or Right and read the comments section.
Thousands of geniuses live and die undiscovered - either by themselves or by others.
So many people will either never get their ‘big break’, or even acknowledge their own worth. My sister is one of the most intelligent people I know and she doesn’t even know it.
We are all alike, on the inside.
One of my favourites. Sting reworked this idea in his haunting eighties ballad The Russisans, where he laments that “we share the same biology, regardless of ideology”. This, of course, is lost on so many people who insisted on viewing Communists and now Muslims as ‘The Other’. No, humans will never learn. Just accept that as a fact.
When a person cannot deceive himself the chances are against his being able to deceive other people.
Religious and political extremism still runs rampant, largely because the leaders actually believe what they say they believe. I’m sure in his own mind, Bush has convinced himself that he is saving the world from “terror”. And it works. Just witness the abundance of right wing websites and blogs that insist “the surge is working! The surge is working!” Sigh. Humans will never learn...Oh I’ve said that already.
Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.
Question everything. Don’t ever take things for granted, especially something as obscure and intangible as ‘truth’.
A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.
Weapons of mass destruction, anyone?
Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured.
Once again, I invite you to visit politically extreme website and witness the way in which anger is damaging the individuals who harbour it and how it is turning them in shells of human beings. What kind of a life can you have if your waking moments are spent spitting vitriol at other human beings? If your day consists of looking for Reds under your beds and turbans in your backyard?
Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint.
Ah, yes. Here Twain directs our attention to our human capacity to believe whatever we read and whatever we are told. I am reminded of a story I heard not long after 9/11 when anti-Muslim hysteria was at a peak and in a tragic case of mistaken identity a Sikh man was murdered by an American patriot because, well he was wearing a turban and only Muslims wear turbans right? And since Muslims are now the enemy they all deserve to die.
I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.
Why do humans so fear non-existence, even though it is from whence we came, that we have to invent fairytales, in which we incredibly survive our own deaths and party in the sky with our 'creator' for all eternity? We didn't exist before we were born, why should we exist after we die?
Wit is the sudden marriage of ideas which before their union were not perceived to have any relation.
Twain is demonstrating why he himself was so witty and why, so many decades later, he is still so relevant. Look back over the quotes I have provided and marvel, as I do, at the way he combines ideas in a way that seem so effortless but which force us to see the world in a different way, or at least understand it a little better.
And at the same time make us laugh.
If anyone would care to share, I would love to hear some of your favourite quotes and what makes them so.
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Comment by dQuarters
~ Albert Eintein
Comment by RubySoho
Music Zone
Thought Zone
xxx
Comment by Winston
Small Thoughts on Big Questions
"Sometimes I think it is a great mistake to have matter that can think and feel. It complains so. By the same token, though, I suppose that boulders and mountains and moons could be accused of being a little too phlegmatic."
- Kurt Vonnegut, Sirens of Titan
Comment by Morgan Bell
Deep Pencil
Business News
Movie Train
"Nothing to me is more distasteful than that entire complacency and satisfaction which beam in the countenances of a newly married couple."
i find smug couples just as irritating as Charles did!