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Directory of Mark Twain's maxims, quotations, and various opinions:

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GENIUS

We praise the mighty genius & despise the idiot; but neither of these men made himself. If credit & blame are due, they are due elsewhere.
- Notebook #32, published in Pudd'nhead Wilson (2024)

AI image created by Barbara Schmidt

... it is impossible that a genius--at least a literary genius--can ever be discovered by his intimates; they are so close to him that he is out of focus to them and they can't get at his proportions; they can't perceive that there is any considerable difference between his bulk and their own. ... Thousands of geniuses live and die undiscovered--either by themselves or by others.
- Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 3 (2015)
[refering to Jim Gillis]

Hunger is the handmaid of genius.
- Following the Equator

...genius itself succeeds only by arduous self-training...to play on the fiddle it is not merely necessary to take a bow and fiddle with it.
- "Contributors Club," Atlantic, 1/1877

Geniuses are people who dash off wierd, wild, incomprehensible poems with astonishing facility, & then go & get booming drunk & sleep in the gutter. Genius elevates a man to ineffable speres [sic] far above the vulgar world, & fills his soul with a regal contempt for the gross & sordid things of earth. It is probably on account of this that people who have genius do not pay their board, as a general thing.
- Mark Twain's Notebooks & Journals, vol. 1, 1855-1873, p. 250.

Twins of Genius tour
Sam Clemens with
George Washington Cable
during their 1884-85 lecture tour.

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