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From the Writings of Mark Twain

Now, I don't know Mr. Twain personally (obviously!), however, I DO know that during his life time he left behind some memorable quotes and writings.

Now, we know that it was impossible to think that Lou and Mark actually knew each other...buuut, somewhere I want to believe that if they had, they just might have been the best of friends.

So now you ask me, what in the world does this have to do with anything? I'll answer. I have decided that it was high time many Mark's quotes were put together for all of you to read!


Fort Yuma is probably the hottest place on earth. The thermometer stays at one hundred and twenty in the shade there all the time - except when it varies and goes higher. It is a US military post, and its occupants get so used to the terrific heat that they suffer without it. There is a tradition (attributed to John Phoenix) that a very, very wicked soldier died there, once, and of course, went straight to the hottest corner of perdition - and the next day he telegraphed back for his blankets.
Mark Twain, Roughing it 1872

(The Great Plains are)...one prodigious graveyard.
Mark Twain who saw it during slaughter of the buffalo

It was the lonliest land for a grave. A land given over to the coyote and the raven - which is but another name for desolation and utter solitude. On damp, murky nights, these scattered skeletons gave forth a soft hideous glow, like very faint spots of moonlight starring the vague desert. It was because of the phosporus in the (buffalo) bones. But no scientific explanation could keep a body from shivering when he drifted by one of those ghostly lights and knew that a skull held it.
Mark Twain, Roughing it 1864 (after passing through the Great Plains)

New Yorkers are burdened with banks and drifts of snow, Californians are burdened with banks and drifts of flowers.
Mark Twain

No land with an unvarying climate can be very beautiful.
Mark Twain on California

Nothing that glitters is gold. Gold in its native state is but dull, unoramental stuff.
Mark Twain, Roughing It

The first 26 graves in Virginia (City) cemetery were occupied by murdered men. So everybody said, so everybody believed...the reason why there was so much slaughtering done was, that in a new mining district the roughtest element predominates, and a person is not respected until he has 'killed his man'. That was the very expression used.
Mark Twain, Roughing It 1864

If she didn't get what she went after, she woud fetch something else.
Mark Twain on the pepperbox pistol.

Virginia (City) was a busy city of streets and houses above ground. Under it was another busy town, down in the bowels of the earth, where a great population of men thronged in and out among an intricate maze of tunnels and drifts, flitting hither and thither under a winking sparkle of lights, and over their heads towered a vast web of interlocking timbers that held the walls of the of the gutted Comstock apart. These timbers were as large as a man's body and the framework stretched upward so far that no eye could pierce to its top through the closing gloom. It was like peering up through the clean picked ribs and bones of some colossal skeleton.
Mark Twain, Roughing It 1864

There is a popular tradition that God Almighty created (Nevada) but when you come to see it...you will think differently.
Mark Twain 1864

Not less than a hundred men have been murdered in Nevada - perhaps I would be within bounds if I said three hundred - and as far as I can learn, only two persons have suffered the death-penalty there. However, four or five who had no money and no political influence have been punished by imprisonment - one languished in prison as much as eight months, I think. However, I do not desire to be extravagant - it may have been less.
Mark Twain, Roughing It

Three months of camp life on Lake Tahoe would restore an Egyptian mummy to his pristine vigor, and give him an appetite like an alligator. I do not mean the oldest and driest mummies, of course, but the fresher ones.
Mark Twain, Roughing it

A true desperado is gifted with spendid courage, and yet he will take the most infamous advantage of his enemy: armed and free, he will stand up before a host an fight until he is shot all to pieces, and yet when he is under the gallows and helpless he will cry and plead like a child.
Mark Twain, Roughing It

But they were rough in those times. They fairly reveled in gold, whiskey, fights, fandangoes, and were unspeakably happy. The honest miner raked from a hundred to a thousand dollars out of his claim a day, and what with the gambling dens and other entertainments, he hadn't a cent the next morning if he had any sort of luck.
Mark Twain on California gold country

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These quotes were borrowed from "Western Quotations" compiled by Richard Dillon.

If you have a question or comment about one of these quotes or Mark Twain, they can be directed to me (Kirsten) through: PnyExp1860@aol.com :o)