 Albert Levering's illustration of Mark Twain for LIFE magazine 1905. From the Dave Thomson collection. |
Meantime I have made more than 40 sea voyages & numerous land trips,
& have gone clear around the globe once. This seems a hard fate. No,
not seems--it was a hard fate. I made all those journeys because I could
not help myself--made them with rebellion in my heart, & bitterness.
Human life is maliciously planned with one principal object in view: to
make you do all the different kinds of things you particularly don't want
to do. - Notes added in April 1909 to Letter to William D. Howells of November, 17, 1878 |
Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.
- Notebook, 1898
Let us endeavor so to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will
be sorry.
- The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson and the Comedy of the Extraordinary Twins
It is the epitome of life. The first half of life consists of the capacity to
enjoy without the chance; the last half consists of the chance without the capacity.
-Letter to Edward Dimmit, July, 19, 1901
| It is human life. We are blown upon the world;
we float buoyantly upon the summer air a little while, complacently showing
off our grace of form and our dainty iridescent colors; then we vanish with
a little puff, leaving nothing behind but a memory--and sometimes not even
that. I suppose that at those solemn times when we wake in the deeps of
the night and reflect, there is not one of us who is not willing to confess
that he is really only a soap-bubble, and as little worth the making. - Mark Twain's Own Autobiography (North American Review, May 3, 1907) |
 "He blew bubbles for the children." From ST. NICHOLAS MAGAZINE, July 1916 |
Such is life, and the trail of the serpent is over us all.
- The Innocents Abroad
We recognize that there are no trivial occurrences in life if we get the right
focus on them.
- Mark Twain's Autobiography
Each person is born to one possession which outvalues all his others- his last
breath.
- Following the Equator, Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar
Don't put too much faith in the passing stranger. This life is full of uncertainties,
and every episode in life, figuratively speaking is just a frog. You want to
watch every exigency as you would a frog, and don't you ever bet a cent on it
until you know whether it is loaded or not.
- Morals Lecture, July 15, 1895
Oh Death where is thy sting! It has none. But life has.
- Notebook, 1894
He had arrived at that point where presently the illusions would cease and he
would have entered upon the realities of life, and God help the man that has
arrived at that point.
- Jack Van Nostrand speech, 1905
Only he who has seen better days and lives to see better days again knows their
full value.
- Notebook, 1902
There was never yet an uninteresting life. Such a thing is an impossibility.
Inside of the dullest exterior there is a drama, a comedy, and a tragedy.
- "The Refuge of the Derelicts" - 1905
When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries of life disappear and life stands
explained.
- Notebook, 1898
There has never been an intelligent person of the age of sixty who would consent
to live his life over again. His or anyone else's.
- Letters from the Earth
Obscurity and a competence. That is the life that is best worth living.
- Mark Twain's Notebook
Life: we laugh and laugh, then cry and cry, then feebler laugh, then die.
- Notebook, 1898; also More Maxims of Mark, Johnson, 1927
Life is at best a dream and at worst a nightmare from which you cannot escape.
- Mysterious Stranger Manuscripts
What is human life? The first third a good time; the rest remembering about
it.
- More Maxims of Mark, Johnson
...the events of life are mainly small events--they only seem large when we
are close to them. By and by they settle down and we see that one doesn't show
above another. They are all about one general low altitude, and inconsequential.
- Mark Twain's Autobiography
It is not likely that any complete life has ever been lived which was not a
failure in the secret judgment of the person who lived it. It is not likely
that there has ever been a civilized person 65 years old who would consent to
live his life over again.
- Mark Twain's Notebook, 1902-1903
But such is human life. Here today and gone tomorrow. A dream--a shadow--a ripple
on the water--a thing for invisible gods to sport with for a season and then
toss idly by--idly by. It is rough.
- "Closed Out" sketch, included in San Francisco letter to Virginia
City Territorial Enterprise, 1/28/1866
Life was not a valuable gift, but death was. Life was a fever-dream made up
of joys embittered by sorrows, pleasure poisoned by pain; a dream that was a
nightmare-confusion of spasmodic and fleeting delights, ecstasies, exultations,
happinesses, interspersed with long-drawn miseries, griefs, perils, horrors,
disappointments, defeats,humiliations, and despairs--the heaviest curse devisable
by divine ingenuity; but death was sweet, death was gentle, death was kind;
death healed the bruised spirit and the broken heart, and gave them rest and
forgetfulness; death was man's best friend; when man could endure life no longer,
death came and set him free.
- Letters from the Earth
Oh, this human life, this earthy life, this weary life! It is so groveling,
and so mean; its ambitions are so paltry, its prides so trivial, its vanities
so childish; and the glories that it values and applauds- lord, how empty!
- No. 44, The Mysterious Stranger
Poor old Methuselah, how did he manage to stand it so long?
- Letter to William D. Howells, February, 9, 1879
Life is purgatory at all times, & a swindle & a crime--yesterday it
was hell.
- Letter to William D. Howells, September 24, 1902
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