Mark Twain's given name was Samuel Langhorne Clemens and considered a great American author. Twain was a very witty fellow, his wit and satire earned him the respect of his friends as well as his enemies. There are a few things we can still learn from this author.
1. Plain question and plain answer make the shortest road out of most perplexities.
- Life on the Mississippi
So many times I have come upon situations where I complicate it and instead should take the situation at face value and find the answer simply. Children seem to find the simplest questions and answers to so many things that we, adults, so easily forget.
2. Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear--not absence of fear.
- Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar
Simply considering DIY projects to save money drags behind it a fear that freezes me up from moving beyond my own comfort level. But with this quote, each time I have fear I must face it, master it and overcome it - not try to get rid of it.
3. Thousands of geniuses live and die undiscovered--either by themselves or by others.
- Autobiography of Mark Twain
We each have the capacity to take our creativity out to the open. Our capacity to take our creativity out to play has no limits, our genius is there for us to find and use with no limits to what genius we have before us. Each one of us has genius in us that makes us unique among others around us.
4. Some men worship rank, some worship heroes, some worship power, some worship God, and over these ideals they dispute & cannot unite--but they all worship money.
- Mark Twain's Notebook
The saying, "Money makes the world go around" is an understatement. Money is needed for food, shelter, clothing and entertainment. But throughout history, we have tried to break free from under the thumb of money even for a moment by bartering, scavenging and finding the free in our freedom.
5. ...being rich ain't what it's cracked up to be. It's just worry and worry, and sweat and sweat, and a-wishing you was dead all the time.
-The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
Money doesn't buy happiness and doesn't create a utopia that we may hope for. We have to enjoy what we have at that moment no matter how rich we are because money has no emotional fulfillment in it.
6. When a distressed nation appeals for this or that or the other grace or help, she hears an answering voice of sympathy from this or that or the other creed or group or faction, scattered here and there and yonder in the spaces of the earth: it is only when she asks for bread, that creed and party are forgotten & the whole world rises to respond.
- letter dated March 14, 1880
When it comes to materialism, nothing make me feel better, longer than when I have a chance to give it away to someone in need. The feeling just isn't there in the acquiring or the having, but in the giving. And when we see the charity at work around us, it makes us feel better and want to join in.
7. If it had not been for him, with his incendiary "Early to bed and early to rise," and all that sort of foolishness, I wouldn't have been so harried and worried and raked out of bed at such unseemly hours when I was young. The late Franklin was well enough in his way; but it would have looked more dignified in him to have gone on making candles and letting other people get up when they wanted to.
- Letter from Mark Twain, San Francisco Alta California, July 25, 1869
I have nothing else to say here, I kinda agree on this quote.
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Mark Twain was a great author, but absolutely horrible investor. He lost bundles of money, repeatedly.
Loved the quotes and explanations, though, you did a first-rate job.