Mark Twain Quotes on Culture
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[Citing a familiar 'American joke':] In Boston they ask, How much does he know? In New York, How much is he worth? In Philadelphia, Who were his parents?
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[A] classic - something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.
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They spell it 'Vinci' and pronounce it 'Vinchy'. Foreigners always spell better than they pronounce.
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Guides cannot master the subtleties of the American joke.
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In Paris they just simply opened their eyes and stared when we spoke to them in French! We never did succeed in making those idiots understand their own language.
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To string incongruities and absurdities together in a wandering and sometimes purposeless way, and seem innocently unaware that they are absurdities, is the basis of the American art, if my position is correct.
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A Jewish beggar is not impossible, perhaps; such a thing may exist, but there are few men that can say they have seen that spectacle.
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If the statistics are right, the Jews constitute but one percent of the human race. It suggests a nebulous dim puff of star dust lost in the blaze of the Milky Way. Properly the Jew ought hardly to be heard of, but he is heard of, has always been heard of. He is as prominent on the planet as any other people, and his commercial importance is extravagantly out of proportion to the smallness of his bulk. His contributions to the world's list of great names in literature, science, art, music, finance, medicine, and abstruse learning are also away out of proportion to the weakness of his numbers. He has made a marvellous fight in the world, in all the ages; and has done it with his hands tied behind him. He could be vain of himself, and be excused for it. The Egyptian, the Babylonian, and the Persian rose, filled the planet with sound and splendor, then faded to dream-stuff and passed away; the Greek and the Roman followed, and made a vast noise, and they are gone; other peoples have sprung up and held their torch high for a time, but it burned out, and they sit in twilight now, or have vanished. The Jew saw them all, beat them all, and is now what he always was, exhibiting no decadence, no infirmities of age, no weakening of his parts, no slowing of his energies, no dulling of his alert and aggressive mind. All things are mortal but the Jew; all other forces pass, but he remains. What is the secret of his immortality?
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France has neither winter nor summer nor morals. Apart from these drawbacks it is a fine country.
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Our most valuable and most instructive materials in the history of man are treasured up in India.
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France is miserable because it is filled with Frenchmen, and Frenchmen are miserable because they live in France.
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Wagner's music is better than it sounds.