Not found in Twain's works, this was attributed to him in Reader's Digest (September 1939): no prior attribution known. Mark Twain’s father died when Twain was eleven years old.
Disputed
Variant: When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.
“I was very sickly and weak during the first years of my infancy, and was, as much as I can remember of myself, a very whimsical boy. Sometimes I learned with enthusiasm, and often found myself in such a kind of ecstasy, that I neither could see nor hear what passed around me. In these fits of thought I forgot playthings and playfellows; I was happy only in my own musings. I always preferred the company of little girls to boys. I was not ten years old when I presented them with some poetry and little verses, the effusions of my heated imagination; some of them fell into my hands in riper years, and after reading them over, I left off poetry altogether. I loved my first private teacher very much; I even can remember him now. My second teacher was a simpleton; he could never understand me, nor enter into my feelings. My antipathy to this man grew daily greater; I could not learn of him, nor could he teach me anything. At last, when in my thirteenth year, I got rid of him, and he being encumbered with debts, I gave him my saving-box when he left. Whether I did this for pity's sake, or joy to get rid of him, I did not know.”
My Life and Confessions, for Philippine, 1786
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Albrecht Thaer 34
German agronomist and an avid supporter of the humus theory… 1752–1828Related quotes
“…Women I do not much care for myself - I prefer little Greek shepherd-boys…”
Fiction, Tremor of Intent (1966)
“When I was a boy, I thought myself a man. Now that I am a man, I find myself a boy.”
as quoted by Horatio B. Williams, Thomas Young, The Man and Physician, J. Opt. Soc. Am. 20, 35-49 (1930).
That's a sign of respect that my father didn't get, that my brother didn't get, that my mother didn't get.
Attributed
The Uttarpara Address (1909)
"The Autobiography of Sir William Topaz McGonagall", published in the Weekly News
McGonagall's "knighthood" was an honorary one conferred on him by King Theebaw of the Andaman Islands: "Knight of the White Elephant of Burmah".
Other works
[Watts turns back on Australia, April 24 2007, http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,22049,21607413-5006002,00.html, The Daily Telegraph, 2007-04-24, https://archive.is/LR0E, 2012-05-29]