Quotes from Michael Shelden

If everybody was satisfied with himself, there would be no heroes. Mark Twain1

Instead he created an enormous body of prose that, at its best, sings.

Titus Andronicus:

Thomas Macaulay's History of England

Two weeks before coming to the hearing he had remarked privately, "All Congresses and Parliaments have a kindly feeling for idiots, and a compassion for them, on account of personal experience and heredity.

Twain's moods changed frequently, and it is unrealistic to saddle him with one dominant emotion during his final years, when he was as likely to assume the part of the joker as that of the angry prophet.

At the end of an especially angry letter to Reverend Twichell on the subject of political hypocrisy, he declared, "I have written you to-day, not to do you a service, but to do myself one. There was bile in me. I had to empty it. … I have used you as an equilibrium-restorer more than once in my time, & shall continue, I guess."31

All Congresses and Parliaments have a kindly feeling for idiots, and a compassion for them, on account of personal experience and heredity." For