Earthlight Books: The Wisdom of Mark Twain

Mark Twain died 100 years ago this week. The famous old wordsmith would be thrilled to see this books remain front and center in libraries, schools and bookshops around the world. He would probably smile at hearing he is still one of the most quotable authors to ever put pen to paper. There have been few better observers of people and their ways than Samuel Langhorne Clemens. Dip into Twain's writing and soak up his wit and wisdom on travel, childhood, poverty and wealth, and many other subjects.

"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

The world lost Mark Twain, real name Samuel Langhorne Clemens (1835-1910), one hundred years ago but his words, wit and wisdom live on. Can there be anyone who loves literature who has not read one of his books? His impact on the literary world is still felt and his humor is as sharp as ever. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and Huckleberry Finn (1884), The Prince and the Pauper (1881) and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889), and his travel books remain must-reads but his bibliography is extensive and always worth investigation.

The Autobiography of Mark Twain

”There are people who strictly deprive themselves of each and every eatable, drinkable and smokable which has in any way acquired a shady reputation. They pay this price for health. And health is all they get for it. How strange it is. It is like paying out your whole fortune for a cow that has gone dry.”

The Innocents Abroad or The New Pilgrims' Progress

“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts.”

Roughing It

“A crowded police docket is the surest of all signs that trade is brisk and money plenty”

The Gilded Age

“No country can be well governed unless its citizens as a body keep religiously before their minds that they are the guardians of the law, and that the law officers are only the machinery for its execution, nothing more.”

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“He had discovered a great law of human action, without knowing it — namely, that in order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to obtain”

A Tramp Abroad

“After a few months’ acquaintance with European ‘coffee,’ one’s mind weakens, and his faith with it, and he begins to wonder if the rich beverage of home, with its clotted layer of yellow cream on top of it, is not a mere dream after all, and a thing which never existed.”

The Prince and the Pauper

“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.”

Life on the Mississippi

“Now and then we had a hope that if we lived and were good, God would permit us to be pirates.”

Huckleberry Finn

“The pitifulest thing out is a mob; that’s what an army is - a mob; they don't fight with courage that's born in them, but with courage that's borrowed from their mass, and from their officers. But a mob without any MAN at the head of it is BENEATH pitifulness”