"Summer Replacement - Part Four - Snippets and Aphorisms"

Although I’m excited to expose you to a promising writer, I’ve been feeling troubling intimations of Wally Pipp.  You know, you give someone a chance and they end up taking your place?  Could that possibly happen with me and this “Twain” Clemens character?  (As it did with Wally Pipp and Lou Gehrig?)  That’s also “All About Eve”, so it happensin movies and well as in movies.  Why wouldn’t it happen in blogs?

Oh well.  “Que sera sera.”

I’ll be back Monday. 

If anyone still cares.

And now, more from the “genius.”

“Politicians are like diapers; they need to be changed often, and for the same reason.” 

“Familiarity breeds contempt – and children.”

“If a man could be crossed with a cat, it would improve the man, but it would deteriorate the cat.”

“If Christ were here there is one thing he would not be – a Christian.”  *

(* Published after his death to avoid earthly rebuke although taking his chances in the Afterlife.)

(Speaking of death…)

“In time, the Deity perceived that death was a mistake; a mistake, in that it was insufficient; insufficient, for the reason that while it was an admirable agent for the inflicting of misery upon the survivor, it allowed the dead person himself to escape from all further persecution in the blessed refuge of the grave.  This was not satisfactory.  A way must be conceived to pursue the dead beyond the tomb.”

“Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience.  This is the ideal life.”

(Another one about death…)

“Let us endeavor so to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.”

"October:  This is one of the peculiarly dangerous months to speculate in stocks in. The others are July, January, September, April, November, May, March, June, December, August and February."

(And one last one about adjectives, written to student D. W. Bowser)

“I notice that you use plain, simple language, short words and brief sentences.  This is the way to write English – it is the modern way and the best way.  Stick to it; don’t let fluff and flowers and verbosity creep in.  When you catch an adjective, kill it.  No, I don’t mean utterly, but kill most of them – then the rest will be valuable.  They weaken when they are close together.  They give strength when they are wide apart.  An adjective habit, or a wordy, diffuse, flowery habit, once fastened upon a person, is as hard to get rid of as any other vice.”

(Mark Twain’s accompanying view:  Ditto and then some about adverbs.)