Mark Twain Zitate

seite 3

195 Zitate voller Witz und Weisheit von Amerikas beliebtestem Autor

The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson, chapter 10 Original engl.: "When angry count four; when very angry, swear."
The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson

The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson, chapter 8
Original engl.: "It is better to be a young June bug than an old bird of paradise."
The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson

Mark Twain, a Biography; prefatory note
Original engl.: "When I was younger I could remember anything, whether it happened or not, but I am getting old, and soon I shall remember only the latter."

Unterwegs: Aus Querkopf Wilsons Neuem Kalender, EulenSpiegelVerlag, S. 116
"Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't.” Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar
Following the Equator

Following the Equator, Kap. IV, Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar
Original engl.: "A dozen direct censures are easier to bear than one morganatic compliment."
Following the Equator

Following the Equator, Kap. XX
Original engl.: "It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them."
Following the Equator

Following the Equator, chapter X
Original engl.: "The secret source of Humor itself is not joy but sorrow."
Following the Equator

Following the Equator, chapter VII
Original engl.: "Truth is the most valuable thing we have. Let us economize it."
Following the Equator

Following the Equator, chapter XXV
Original engl.: »Classic.« A book which people praise and don't read."
Following the Equator

Following the Equator, chapter LXIX
Original engl.: "There isn't a Parallel of Latitude but thinks it would have been the Equator if it had had its rights."
Following the Equator

Following the Equator, chapter XXXVI.
Original engl.: "There are several good protections against temptations, but the surest is cowardice."
Following the Equator

Following the Equator, chapter XVIII
Original engl.: "It is easier to stay out than get out."
Following the Equator

Following the Equator, chapter LIX
Original engl.: "Don't part with your illusions. When they are gone you may still exist but you have ceased to live."
Following the Equator

Following the Equator, chapter LXIV.
Original engl.: "In Noah's Ark the beds were simply scandalous. Noah set the fashion, and it will endure in one degree of modification or another till the next flood."
Following the Equator

Following the Equator, chapter XI.
Original engl.: "We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it - and stop there; lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot stove-lid. She will never sit down on a hot stove-lid again - and that is well; but also she will never sit down on a cold one any more."
Following the Equator
Variante: Wir sollten darauf achten, einer Erfahrung nur so viel Weisheit zu entnehmen, wie in ihr steckt - mehr nicht; damit wir nicht der Katze gleichen, die sich auf eine heiße Herdplatte setzte. Sie setzt sich nie wieder auf eine heiße Herdplatte - und das ist richtig; aber sie setzt sich auch nie wieder auf eine kalte.

Following the Equator, chapter XV.
Original engl.: "Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't."
Following the Equator

Rede vor dem Nineteenth Century Club, New York, 20. November 1900, Mark Twain's Speeches; nach Caleb T. Winchester
Original engl.: "[…] a classic - something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read."
Andere

The Last Words Of Great Men, in: The Curious Republic of Gondour and Other Whimsical Sketches, 1869
Original engl.: "A distinguished man should be as particular about his last words as he is about his last breath. He should write them out on a slip of paper and take the judgment of his friends on them. He should never leave such a thing to the last hour of his life, and trust to an intellectual spirit at the last moment to enable him to say something smart with his latest gasp and launch into eternity with grandeur."
Andere

9. Juni 1899, Savage Club, London; Mark Twain's Speeches
Original engl.: "I was sorry to have my name mentioned as one of the great authors, because they have a sad habit of dying off. Chaucer is dead, Spencer is dead, so is Milton, so is Shakespeare, and I am not feeling very well myself."
Andere

Woman - an Opinion; Rede vor dem Washington Correspondents' Club, in: Mark Twain's Speeches
Original engl.: "What, sir, would the people of the earth be without woman? They would be scarce, sir, almighty scarce."
Andere

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, Kap. XXII.
Original engl.: "Whenever the literary German dives into a sentence, that is the last you are going to see of him till he emerges on the other side of his Atlantic with his verb in his mouth."
Andere

The Innocents Abroad, chapter III
Original engl.: "We all like to see people seasick when we are not, ourselves."
Andere

More Maxims of Mark, posthum veröffentlicht v. Merle Johnson, Privatdruck, New York 1927. Siehe auch:
Original engl.: "Civilization is a limitless multiplication of unnecessary necessaries."
Andere

Brief an George Bainton vom 15. Oktober 1888; veröffentlicht in "The Art of Authorship" von George Bainton
Original engl.: "The difference between the almost right word and the right word is the difference between the lightning-bug and the lightning."
Briefe

Brief an W. D. Howells, 7. Januar 1884; Mark Twain's Letters 1876-1885
Original engl.: "Money may desert you, friends forsake you, enemies grow indifferent to you, but the scarlet fever will be true to you."
Briefe

Gemäß http://www.snopes.com/quotes/twain.asp nicht von Mark Twain. Er schreibt vielmehr in "Durch dick und dünn" (Roughing It): "Das Klima von San Francisco ist mild und einzigartig gleichbleibend. Das Thermometer steht das ganze Jahr bei etwa 70 Grad [21 °C]."
engl. zitiert als: "The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco."
Fälschlich zugeschrieben

Variante: Eine Angewohnheit kann man nicht aus dem Fenster werfen. Man muß sie die Treppe hinunterprügeln, Stufe für Stufe.
Quelle: The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson, chapter 6 https://www.gutenberg.org/files/102/102-h/102-h.htm#link2HCH0006

Notebook, 1895
Original engl.: ("It is the prohibition that makes anything precious"
Notebook