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Directory of Mark Twain's maxims, quotations, and various opinions:

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z


NAMES

1935 bas relief
Photo of Mark Twain bas relief from the
Dave Thomson collection.

In those old days the average man called his children after his most revered literary and historical idols; consequently there was hardly a family, at least in the West, but had a Washington in it--and also a Lafayette, a Franklin, and six or eight sounding names from Byron, Scott, and the Bible, if the offspring held out. To visit such a family, was to find one's self confronted by a congress made up of representatives of the imperial myths and the majestic dead of all the ages. There was something thrilling about it, to a stranger, not to say awe inspiring.
- The Gilded Age

There is not a single celebrated Southern name in any of the departments of human industry except those of war, assassination, lynching, murder, the duel, repudiation, & massacre.
- Mark Twain's notebook #19 (1881).

...when a teacher calls a boy by his entire name it means trouble.
- Mark Twain in Eruption

The minute we get reconciled to a person, how willing we are to throw aside little needless punctilios and pronounce his name right.
- "The Shrine of St. Wagner"

We called him Barney for short. We couldn't use his real name, there wasn't time.
- Following the Equator

 

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