from Writer's Almanac (Garrison Keillor, American Public Media):
Today is the birthday of Samuel Langhorne Clemens, better known as Mark Twain (1835), born in Florida, Missouri. He worked as a riverboat pilot, a miner, and a journalist before becoming an author.
In his unfinished novel, The Mysterious Stranger, he wrote, "Sanity and happiness are an impossible combination. No sane man can be happy, for to him life is real, and he sees what a fearful thing it is. Only the mad can be happy, and not many of those."
One of the most quotable of authors, Mark Twain said:
"It were not best that we should all think alike; it is difference of opinion that makes horse races."
And "Truth is mighty and will prevail. There is nothing the matter with this, except that it ain't so."
And "Familiarity breeds contempt -- and children."
And "The secret source of humor itself is not joy but sorrow. There is no humor in heaven."
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
Washington Post dot-com Columnist and Blogger Michael Cavna comments on the GOOGLE doodle of the day for MARK TWAIN:
TODAY, AMERICA'S FINEST humorist gets one of America's finest Google tributes.
And given the full, screen-sweeping beauty of a small-town scene, reports of its breadth are not greatly exaggerated.
To celebrate the 176th anniversary of Mark Twain's Missouri birth Wednesday, Google paints its logo in perhaps the most fitting way possible: By using its patented "Doodle" to render the world of Twain's Tom Sawyer, who famously cajoled friends to whitewash a fence for him.
To honor an author enshrined in the gilded pantheon of artistic genius — that "headwater of American fiction," as Hemingway so rightly said of Twain — Google found a deft way to depict today's brush with greatness.
www.google.com/ today is Nov. 29
Post a Comment