Samuel Langhorne Clemens (Mark Twain)

"To get the right word in the right place is a rare achievement. To condense the diffused light of a page of thought into the luminous flash of a single sentence, is worthy to rank as a prize composition just by itself...Anybody can have ideas--the difficulty is to express them without squandering a quire of paper on an idea that ought to be reduced to one glittering paragraph."
-- Letter to Emeline Beach, 10 Feb 1868

"I notice that you use plain, simple language, short words and brief sentences. That is the way to write English -- it is the modern way and the best way. Stick to it; don't let fluff and flowers and verbosity creep in. When you catch an adjective, kill it. No, I don't mean utterly, but kill most of them -- then the rest will be valuable. They weaken when they are close together. They give strength when they are wide apart. An adjective habit, or a wordy, diffuse, flowery habit, once fastened upon a person, is as hard to get rid of as any other vice."
-- Letter to D. W. Bowser, 20 March 1880

"You need not expect to get your book right the first time. Go to work and revamp or rewrite it. God only exhibits his thunder and lightning at intervals, and so they always command attention. These are God's adjectives. You thunder and lightning too much; the reader ceases to get under the bed, by and by."
-- Letter to Orion Clemens, 23 March 1878

"Let us guess that whenever we read a sentence & like it, we unconsciously store it away in our model-chamber; & it goes, with the myriad of its fellows, to the building, brick by brick, of the eventual edifice which we call our style."
-- Letter to George Bainton, 15 Oct 1888; (first printed in The Art of Authorship: Literary Reminiscences, Methods of Work, and Advice to Young Beginners, Personally Contributed by Leading Authors of the Day. Compiled and Edited by George Bainton. New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1890, pp. 85-88.)

"When an honest writer discovers an imposition it is his simple duty to strip it bare and hurl it down from its place of honor, no matter who suffers by it; any other course would render him unworthy of the public confidence."
" -- A Tramp Abroad

Things Mark Twain Didn't Really Say

Mark Twain is the most quoted -- and the most misquoted -- American of all time. People hear a witticism and just assume it was Twain; Or they want to give a punchline heft so they add the weight of his name. Since the COT Pantheon usually offers up little-known drafts or hidden curios from its members, and everything Twain wrote is available in every draft or revised form, we thought we'd offer a few quotes that neither Samuel Clemens nor Mark Twain likely uttered, despite popular belief. (Note that there's always a line from Twain on the topic that's funnier, as well.)

1. "The secret of getting ahead is getting started."

• This is one of those "It's funny 'cuz it's true" lines that is neither funny nor true. What Mark Twain did say: "Never put off till tomorrow what may be done day after tomorrow just as well."

2. "I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time."

• This line was actually written by Blaise Pascal (1623 - 1662) of France in Letter XVI of his Provincial Letters, written around 1656. It really is a perfect witticism, as translated into English by Thomas M'Crie: "The present letter is a very long one, simply because I had no leisure to make it shorter." If Twain ever saw that translation, he probably wished he had written it (but then again, he didn't have the time, either).

3. "The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco."

• This reads like one of those lines that somebody said and then added, "Mark Twain said that," in order to get a better response. What Mark Twain did say: "Cold! If the thermometer had been an inch longer we'd all have frozen to death."

4. "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics."

• Twain himself denied inventing this quote, and claimed that it was actually British statesman Benjamin Disraeli (1804 - 1881) who invented the phrase. If he attributed it to a politician, he must not have liked the line.

5. "It is better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than to open it and remove all doubt."

• Twain never would have set up a critic or debate opponent for a snappy "then you should have kept it shut, yourself" retort, like this phrase does. What Mark Twain did say: "[He] was endowed with a stupidity which by the least little stretch would go around the globe four times and tie."

6. "Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it."

• Twain knew censorship was good for book sales! Twain once remarked to his Adventures of Huckleberry Finn editor, "Apparently, the Concord library has condemned Huck as 'trash and only suitable for the slums.' This will sell us another twenty-five thousand copies for sure!" What Mark Twain did say about censorship: "When a Library expels a book of mine and leaves an unexpurgated Bible lying around where unprotected youth and age can get hold of it, the deep unconscious irony of it delights me and doesn't anger me."

7. "Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company."

• Twain said something very similar in the 1890s -- but he may have stolen the line: Politician Benjamin "Bluff" Wade (1800 - 1878) said something nearly identical in 1885: "heaven has the better climate, but hell has the better company." When Twain found out, the fact that a politician of all people beat him to a punchline must have really hurt.