Mark Twain citations célèbres
Mark Twain Citations
There are no grades of vanity, there are only grades of ability in concealing it.
en
All schools, all colleges, have 2 great functions: to confer, & to conceal, valuable knowledge.
en
“La vérité est la chose la plus précieuse que nous avons. Il nous faut l'économiser.”
Truth is the most valuable thing we have. Let us economize it.
en
Men are more compassionate/(nobler)/magnanimous/generous than God; for men forgive the dead, but God does not.
en
The trouble ain't that there is too many fools, but that the lightning ain't distributed right.
en
What God lacks is convictions -stability of character. He ought to be a Presbyterian or a Catholic or something, -not try to be everything.
en
“Il n'y a eu qu'un chrétien. Ils l'ont attrapé et crucifié – tôt.”
There has only been one Christian. They caught him & crucified him -early.
en
Variante: Dans vingt ans, vous serez plus déçu par les choses que vous n'avez pas faites que par celles que vous avez faites. Alors sortez des sentiers battus. Mettez les voiles. Explorez. Rêvez. Découvrez.
Mark Twain: Citations en anglais
Source: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885), Ch. 2
“The late Bill Nye once said "I have been told that Wagner's music is better than it sounds."”
Source: Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 1 (2010), p. 288
“Many a small thing has been made large by the right kind of advertising.”
Source: A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889), Ch. 22
Source: Autobiography of Mark Twain, Vol. 2 (2013), p. 4
Source: Autobiography of Mark Twain, Vol. 3 (2015), p. 173, of Theodore Roosevelt
“Whenever the human race assembles to a number exceeding four, it cannot stand free speech.”
Source: Autobiography of Mark Twain, Vol. 2 (2013), p. 442
“It is a pity we can't escape from life when we are young.”
Source: Autobiography of Mark Twain, Vol. 2 (2013), p. 120
“Our most valuable and most instructive materials in the history of man are treasured up in India.”
Max Müller, India: What Can India Teach Us? (1883), p. 15 http://books.google.com/books?id=pIVDAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA15&dq=%22most+valuable+and+most+instructive+materials+in+the+history+of+man+are+treasured+up+in+India%22
Misattributed
Notebook #42
Source: Autobiography of Mark Twain, Vol. 3 (2015), p. 245
About Margaret Deland's book John Ward, Preacher
Mark Twain's Notebook (1935)
Source: Autobiography of Mark Twain, Vol. 3 (2015), p. 386
“Tomorrow night I appear for the first time before a Boston audience — 4000 critics.”
Letter to Pamela Clemens Moffet, 9 November 1869, in Albert Bigelow Paine, Mark Twain's Letters: Arranged with Comment (1917), Vol. 1, p. 168 http://books.google.com/books?id=Ia8hAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA168
that is all he did. These object lessons should teach us that ninety-nine parts of all things that proceed from the intellect are plagiarisms, pure and simple; and the lesson ought to make us modest. But nothing can do that.
Letter to Helen Keller, after she had been accused of plagiarism for one of her early stories (17 March 1903), published in Mark Twain's Letters, Vol. 1 (1917) edited by Albert Bigelow Paine, p. 731
“I'll risk forty dollars that he can outjump any frog in Calaveras county.”
"The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County"; first published as "Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog" in the New York Saturday Press, 18 November 1865; revised by the author and reprinted the following month in The Californian; first anthologized in The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, and Other Sketches http://books.google.com/books?id=kqMDAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA17 (1867), ed. John Paul
“One of the brightest gems in the New England weather is the dazzling uncertainty of it.”
New England Weather, speech to the New England Society (December 22, 1876)
Source: Autobiography of Mark Twain, Vol. 3 (2015), p. 99
Source: Autobiography of Mark Twain, Vol. 3 (2015), p. 14, of his daughter's, Clara's, incipient career as a concert vocalist
Source: Autobiography of Mark Twain, Vol. 2 (2013), p. 393
Source: Autobiography of Mark Twain, Vol. 2 (2013), p. 46
“Truth is the most valuable thing we have. Let us economize it.”
Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar, Ch. VII
Following the Equator (1897)
Twain, Mark - Christian Science: Book I. Chapter V http://www.classicreader.com/book/1286/6/
“Weather is a literary specialty, and no untrained hand can turn out a good article on it.”
The American Claimant, foreword (1892)
Incorrectly attributed to Twain, this is actually a quotation from an article in The Pocono Record (18 February 1971, page 4 http://www.newspapers.com/newspage/40447792/)
Misattributed
Source: Mark Twain's Notebook (1935), p. 393
referencing the Kumbh Mela, Ch. XLIX
Following the Equator (1897)
Letter to William Dean Howells, 27 February 1885, in Albert Bigelow Paine, Mark Twain's letters: Arranged with Comment (1917), Vol. 2, p. 450 http://books.google.com/books?id=4KZhv9y8sMIC&pg=PA450&lpg=PA450
From a note Twain wrote in London on May 31, 1897 to reporter Frank Marshall White: Shelley Fisher Fishkin, Lighting Out For the Territory : Reflections on Mark Twain and American Culture (Oxford University Press, 1996), p. 134 http://books.google.com/books?id=ms3tce7BgJsC&lpg=PA134&vq=%22the%20report%20of%20my%20death%20was%20an%20exaggeration%22&pg=PA134. (The original note is the Papers of Mark Twain, Accession #6314, etc., Clifton Waller Barrett Library, Special Collections, University of Virginia Library, Charlottesville, Va. http://ead.lib.virginia.edu/vivaxtf/view?docId=uva-sc/viu00005.xml, in Box 1.)
White subsequently reported this in "Mark Twain Amused," New York Journal, 2 June 1897. White also recounts the incident in "Mark Twain as a Newspaper Reporter," The Outlook, Vol. 96, 24 December 1910
"Chapters from My Autobiography", The North American Review, 21 September 1906, p. 160. Mark Twain
Misquote: The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.
This paraphrase or misquote may be more popular than the original.
Variante: I said - 'Say the report is greatly exaggerated'.
