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
“Definition of a classic — something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.”
Quoting or paraphrasing a Professor Winchester in "Disappearance of Literature" http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-new2?id=TwaSpee.sgm&images=images/modeng&data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed&tag=public&part=52&division=div1, speech at the Nineteenth Century Club, New York, 20 November 1900, in Mark Twain's Speeches (1910), ed. William Dean Howells, p. 194 http://books.google.com/books?id=7etXZ5Q17ngC&pg=PA194
Variante: A classic – something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.
Source: Autobiography of Mark Twain, Vol. 2 (2013), p. 475
"Consistency", paper read at the Hartford Monday Evening Club on 5 December 1887. The Complete Essays of Mark Twain, p. 582 http://books.google.com/books?id=sujuHO_fvJgC&pg=PA582&dq=%22When+the+doctrine+of+allegiance%22 (First published in the 1923 edition of Mark Twain's Speeches, ed. Albert Bigelow Paine, pp. 120-130, where it is incorrectly dated "following the Blaine-Cleveland campaign, 1884." (See Mark Twain's Notebooks & Journals (1979), ed. Frederick Anderson, Vol. 3, p. 41, footnote 92 http://books.google.com/books?id=kMbeUm4pJwsC&pg=PA41) Many reprints repeat Paine's dating.)
Source: Autobiography of Mark Twain, Vol. 3 (2015), p. 222
“There has never been a Protestant boy nor a Protestant girl whose mind the Bible has not soiled.”
Source: Autobiography of Mark Twain, Vol. 2 (2013), p. 135
“The best of us would rather be popular than right.”
No. 44, the Mysterious Stranger (unpublished manuscript written 1902–1908)
To the Person Sitting in Darkness http://xroads.virginia.edu/~drbr/sitting.html (1901)
“A crowded police docket is the surest of all signs that trade is brisk and money plenty.”
Roughing It (published 1872)
Roughing It (1872)
Source: Autobiography of Mark Twain, Vol. 3 (2015), p. 451
"The Treaty With China", article in The New York Tribune, 1868-08-04. Quoted in Mark Twain's Letters, volume ii, p. 239 https://books.google.com/books?id=EWvU21-vV8EC&pg=PA239&lpg=PA239&dq=%22I+have+seen+Chinamen+abused+and+maltreated+in+all+the+mean,+cowardly+ways+possible+to+the+invention+of+a+degraded+nature.%22&source=bl&ots=-MSeb52ibq&sig=7EJ2Hkgp58wiQNoBmWysiM5YcIQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjMxPKKvbTMAhUM4mMKHbICCt0Q6AEIHTAA#v=onepage&q=%22I%20have%20seen%20Chinamen%20abused%20and%20maltreated%20in%20all%20the%20mean%2C%20cowardly%20ways%20possible%20to%20the%20invention%20of%20a%20degraded%20nature.%22&f=false
“Wagner's music is better than it sounds.”
Actually by Bill Nye, possibly confused due to Nye quoting Twain in More Tramps Abroad, 1897. (See also autobiography, vol. 1, p. 288.)
Misattributed
“…when the human race is not grotesque it is because it is asleep and losing its opportunity.”
Source: Autobiography of Mark Twain, Vol. 2 (2013), p. 127
“Truth is stranger than fiction — to some people, but I am measurably familiar with it.”
Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar, Ch. XV
Following the Equator (1897)
Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar, Ch. XLIX
Following the Equator (1897)
The Autobiography of Mark Twain (1959 edition, edited by Charles Neider).
“He is now fast rising from affluence to poverty.”
"Rev. Henry Ward Beecher's Farm" (1869), anthologized in Mark Twain's Sketches http://books.google.com/books?id=UwcCAAAAQAAJ (1872)
Mark Twain in eruption: hitherto unpublished pages about men and events, 1940, Mark Twain, Bernard Augustine De Voto, Harper & brothers. This appears to be the origin of the variant:
If you would have your work last forever, and by forever I mean fifty years, it must neither overtly preach nor overtly teach, but it must covertly preach and covertly teach.
Attributed to Twain by J. Michael Straczynski in The complete book of scriptwriting, 2002, Writer's Digest Books
Source: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885), Ch. 18
“Barring that natural expression of villainy which we all have, the man looked honest enough.”
"A Mysterious Visit", Buffalo Express, 19 March 1870. Anthologized in Mark Twain's Sketches, New and Old http://books.google.com/books?id=5LcIAAAAQAAJ (1875)
“As I slowly grow wise I briskly grow cautious.”
"English as She Is Taught", The Century, Vol. 33, No. 6, April 1887 http://books.google.com/books?id=EzGgAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA932. A slightly abridged version was reprinted as Introduction http://books.google.com/books?id=CxIuAAAAYAAJ&pg=PR11 to Caroline B. Le Row, English as She Is Taught: Genuine Answers to Some Examination Questions Asked in Our Public Schools (1901)
"The Privilege of the Grave" (1905)
Ch 25 http://www.literature.org/authors/twain-mark/connecticut/chapter-25.html
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889)
Ch. 22 http://www.literature.org/authors/twain-mark/connecticut/chapter-22.html
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889)
