Mark Twain Was a Bitch and I Love It

It's the 176th anniversary of Mark Twain's birth today, the Google doodle reliably informs me. Twain is of course the author of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. But more than just being an accomplished author and social commentator, he was also a catty bitch who had a clever quip and piercing put-down for every occasion. The old bastard spent his final years writing a hundreds of pages of a memoir swimming in bile.



Twain is one of the most eminently quotable authors of all time. Here are some of his best burns:

Every time I read 'Pride and Prejudice,' I want to dig her up and hit her over the skull with her own shin-bone.

-On Jane Austen

Just the omission of Jane Austen’s books alone would make a fairly good library out of a library that hadn’t a book in it.
-More on Austen

Cooper's art has some defects. In one place in Deerslayer, and in the restricted space of two-thirds of a page, Cooper has scored 114 offenses against literary art out of a possible 115. It breaks the record.
-On James Fenimore Cooper

Once you put it down, you simply can't pick it up

-On one of Henry James' books

It is chloroform in print. If Joseph Smith composed this book, the act was a miracle - keeping awake while he did it was, at any rate.
-On the Book of Mormon

And some more general quotes from the curmudgeon:

All you need is ignorance and confidence and the success is sure.                

Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please.

There is nothing so annoying as to have two people talking when you're busy interrupting.

Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on or by imbeciles who really mean it.

Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.

Patriot: the person who can holler the loudest without knowing what he is hollering about.”

Familiarity breeds contempt - and children.

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

Good breeding consists in concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of the other person.

If man could be crossed with the cat, it would improve man but deteriorate the cat.