Twainery

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NOTE: The WORDman is on the road, and so you’ll have to make up your own words for the rest of the week. But these will get you started.

Some WORDS from Samuel Clemens

• On writing: “Plain clarity is better than ornate obscurity.” (1900 letter to his editor)

• On editing: “You really must get your mind out and have it repaired.” (same year, same editor....)

• On authorities: “Ecclesiastical and military courts—made up of cowards, hypocrites and time-servers—can be bred at the rate of a million a year and have material left over; but it takes five centuries to breed a Joan of Arc and a Zola.” (1835)

• To an editor he respected: “Slash it, with entire freedom; the more you slash, the better I like it.” (to William Dean Howells, 1881)

• On originality: “The thought is nothing—it has occurred to everybody; so has every thought that is worth fame. The expression of it is the thing to applaud....” (margin notes, Modern English Literature: Its Blemishes and Defects, 1857)

• and... “What a good thing Adam had—when he said a good thing he knew nobody had said it before.”

• Finally.... “When I am king, they shall not have bread and shelter only, but also teachings out of books, for a full belly is little worth where the mind is starved.” (The Prince and the Pauper, 1881)

Editor’s Note: I had my mind out for repair sometime in the 1990s, but the tech guy reinstalled it backasswards.

Today’s Wish-I-Were-Here Photo
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