
Josh Billings' Old Farmer's Allminax, "January 1871" http://books.google.com/books?id=sUI1AAAAMAAJ&q=%22Don't+mistake+vivacity+for+wit+thare+iz+about+az+mutch+difference+az+thare+iz+between+lightning+and+a+lightning+bug%22&pg=PT30#v=onepage (1870)
Letter to George Bainton, 15 October 1888, solicited for and printed in George Bainton, The Art of Authorship: Literary Reminiscences, Methods of Work, and Advice to Young Beginners (1890), pp. 87–88 http://books.google.com/books?id=XjBjzRN71_IC&pg=PA87.
Twain repeated the lightning bug/lightning comparison in several contexts, and credited Josh Billings for the idea:
Josh Billings defined the difference between humor and wit as that between the lightning bug and the lightning.
Speech at the 145th annual dinner of St. Andrew's Society, New York, 30 November 1901, Mark Twain Speaking (1976), ed. Paul Fatout, p. 424
Billings' original wording was characteristically affected:
Don't mistake vivacity for wit, thare iz about az mutch difference az thare iz between lightning and a lightning bug.
Josh Billings' Old Farmer's Allminax, "January 1871" http://books.google.com/books?id=sUI1AAAAMAAJ&pg=PT30. Also in Everybody's Friend, or; Josh Billing's Encyclopedia and Proverbial Philosophy of Wit and Humor (1874), p. 304 http://books.google.com/books?id=7rA8AAAAYAAJ&pg=PA304
Source: The Wit and Wisdom of Mark Twain
Josh Billings' Old Farmer's Allminax, "January 1871" http://books.google.com/books?id=sUI1AAAAMAAJ&q=%22Don't+mistake+vivacity+for+wit+thare+iz+about+az+mutch+difference+az+thare+iz+between+lightning+and+a+lightning+bug%22&pg=PT30#v=onepage (1870)
“There's a difference between the wordsand. And it's more than three words.”
Source: The Moon and More
“A right word is the most direct route between two minds.”
A.Word.A.Day (Feb 17, 2014) http://wordsmith.org/words/escutcheon.html
Equus (Longman, [1973] 1993), p. 11
Conferː "Tragedy, for me, is not a conflict between right and wrong, but between two different kinds of right."
Interviewed by Mike Wood for the William Inge Center for the Arts. http://www.ingecenter.org/interviews/PeterShaffertext.htm
What Are Masterpieces and Why Are There So Few of Them (1936), Afterword of a later edition
Statement to the Deputation of Free Negroes (14 August 1862), in The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, edited by Roy P. Baler, Rutgers University Press, 1953, Vol. V, p. 371
1860s