...anywhere is better than Paris. Paris the cold, Paris the drizzly, Paris
the rainy, Paris the damnable. More than a hundred years ago somebody asked
Quin, "Did you ever see such a winter in all your life before?" "Yes,"
said he, "Last summer." I judge he spent his summer in Paris. Let
us change the proverb; Let us say all bad Americans go to Paris when they die.
No, let us not say it for this adds a new horror to Immortality.
- letter to Lucius Fairchild, 28 April 1880, reprinted in Mark Twain, The
Letter Writer
The objects of which Paris folks are fond--literature, art, medicine and adultery.
- speech at the Stanley Club in Paris, ca. April 1879
M. de Lamester's new French dictionary just issued in Paris defines virtue
as: "A woman who has only one lover and don't steal."
- quoted in A Bibliography of Mark Twain, Merle Johnson
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.
- The Innocents Abroad
Trivial Americans go to Paris when they die.
- Notebook #18, Feb.- Sept. 1879
Also see: French
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