HIGH CHURCH.
from A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (1889)
One of Mark Twain’s very closest friends (for more than forty years) was the Reverend Joseph Hopkins Twichell. Obviously, there was much on which they agreed to disagree. But, believe it, the gospel according to Mark (Twain, that is) contains much sound guidance for believers and non-believers. You don’t need to take this on faith; Brother Mark is about to enlighten us:
So much blood has been shed by the Church because of an omission from the Gospel: “Ye shall be indifferent as to what your neighbor’s religion is.” Not merely tolerant of it, but indifferent to it. Divinity is claimed for many religions; but no religion is great enough or divine enough to add that new law to its code.
—quoted in Mark Twain: A Biography (1912)
by Albert Bigelow Paine
Man is a Religious Animal. He is the only Religious Animal. He is the only animal that has the True Religion—several of them. He is the only animal that loves his neighbor as himself and cuts his throat if his theology isn’t straight. He has made a graveyard of the globe in trying his honest best to smooth his brother’s path to happiness and heaven . . . The higher animals have no religion. And we are told that they are going to be left out in the Hereafter. I wonder why? It seems questionable taste.
—“The Lowest Animal”
You cain’t pray a lie.
—Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885)
But we were good boys, good Presbyterian boys, all Presbyterian boys, and loyal and all that; anyway, we were good Presbyterian boys when the weather was doubtful; when it was fair, we did wander a little from the fold.
—1902 speech
Man was made at the end of the week’s work when God was tired.
—Mark Twain’s Notebook (1935)
Indeed, none but the Deity can tell what is good luck and what is bad before the returns are all in.
—1904 letter
Humor must be one of the chief attributes of God. Plants and animals that are distinctly humorous in form and characteristics are God’s jokes.
—quoted in Mark Twain: A Biography (1912)
by Albert Bigelow Paine
True irreverence is disrespect for another man’s god.
—Following the Equator (1897)
There was no crime. Merely little things like pillaging orchards and watermelon patches and breaking the Sabbath—we didn’t break the Sabbath often enough to signify—once a week perhaps.
—1902 speech
Mine was a trained Presbyterian conscience and knew but the one duty—to hunt and harry its slave upon all pretexts and on all occasions, particularly when there was no sense nor reason in it.
—Autobiography
The Christian’s Bible is a drug store. Its contents remain the same; but the medical practice changes . . . During many ages there were witches. The Bible said so. The Bible commanded that they should not be allowed to live. Therefore the Church, after eight hundred years, gathered up its halters, thumb-screws, and firebrands, and set about its holy work in earnest. She worked hard at it night and day during nine centuries and imprisoned, tortured, hanged, and burned whole hordes and armies of witches, and washed the Christian world clean with their foul blood.
Then it was discovered that there was no such thing as witches, and never had been. One does not know whether to laugh or to cry . . . There are no witches. The witch text remains; only the practice has changed. Hell fire is gone, but the text remains. Infant damnation is gone, but the text remains. More than two hundred death penalties are gone from the law books, but the texts that authorized them remain.
—Europe and Elsewhere (1923)
There are those who scoff at the school boy, calling him frivolous and shallow. Yet it was the school boy who said, Faith is believing what you know ain’t so.
—Following the Equator (1897)
There has been only one Christian. They caught him and crucified him—early.
—1898 notebook entry
If Christ were here there is one thing he would not be—a Christian.
—Mark Twain’s Notebook (1935)
Blasphemy? No, it is not blasphemy. If God is as vast as that, he is above blasphemy; if He is as little as that, He is beneath it.
—quoted in Mark Twain: A Biography (1912)
by Albert Bigelow Paine
I am plenty safe enough in his hands; I am not in any danger from that kind of a Diety. The one that I want to keep out of the reach of, is the caricature of him which one finds in the Bible. We (that one and I) could never respect each other, never get along together. I have met his superior a hundred times—in fact I amount to that myself.
—1889 letter
The church is always trying to get other people to reform; it might not be a bad idea to reform itself a little, by way of example.
—A Tramp Abroad (1880)
I believe our Heavenly Father invented man because he was disappointed in the monkey.
—Mark Twain in Eruption
Such is the human race. Often it does seem such a pity that Noah and his party did not miss the boat.
—Christian Science (1907)
He didn’t know nothing at all the rest of the day, and preached a prayer-meeting sermon that night that give him a rattling reputation, because the oldest man in the world couldn’t a understood it.
—Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885)
The choir always tittered and whispered all through the service. There was once a church choir that was not ill-bred, but I have forgotten where it was.
—The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876)
I have been reading the morning paper. I do it every morning—knowing well that I shall find in it the usual depravities and basenesses and hypocrisies and cruelties that make up civilization, and cause me to put in the rest of the day pleading for the damnation of the human race. I cannot seem to get my prayers answered, yet I do not despair.
—1899 letter
Nothing agrees with me. If I drink coffee, it gives me dyspepsia; if I drink wine, it gives me the gout; if I go to church, it gives me dysentery.
—1905 letter
Man is the only animal that deals in that atrocity of atrocities, War. He is the only one that gathers his brethren about him and goes forth in cold blood . . . to exterminate his kind. He is the only animal that for sordid wages will march out . . . and help to slaughter strangers of his own species who have done him no harm and with whom he has no quarrel . . . And in the intervals between campaigns he washes the blood off his hands and works for “the universal brotherhood of man”—with mouth.
—What Is Man?
The noblest work of God? Man. Who found it out? Man.
—Autobiography
There are times when one would like to hang the whole human race, and finish the farce.
—A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (1889)
I am the only man living who understands human nature; God has put me in charge of this branch office; when I retire there will be no-one to take my place. I shall keep on doing my duty, for when I get over on the other side, I shall use my influence to have the human race drowned again, and this time drowned good, no omissions, no Ark.
—quoted in J. Macy’s Mark Twain (1913)
There are two kinds of Christian morals, one private and the other public. These two are so distinct, so unrelated, that they are no more akin to each other than are archangels and politicians.
—1906 speech
It now seems plain to me that that theory ought to be vacated in favor of a new and truer one . . . the Descent of Man from the Higher Animals.
—“The Lowest Animal”
A sin takes on a new and real terror when there seems a chance that it is going to be found out.
—“The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg”
What is courtesy? Consideration for others. Is there a good deal of it in the American character? So far as I have observed, no. Is it an American characteristic? So far as I have observed, the most prominent, the most American of all American characteristics, is the poverty of it in the American character.
—1906 speech
As by the fires of experience, so by commission of crime you learn real morals. Commit all crimes, familiarize yourself with all sins, take them in rotation (there are only two or three thousand of them), stick to it, commit two or three every day, and by and by you will be proof against them. When you are through you will be proof against all sins and morally perfect. You will be vaccinated against every possible commission of them. This is the only way.
—1899 speech
An injurious truth has no merit over an injurious lie . . . a great soul, with a great purpose, can make a weak body strong and keep it so.
—Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc (1896)
What have we done for Adam? Nothing. What has Adam done for us? Everything. He gave us life, he gave us death, he gave us heaven, he gave us hell. These are inestimable privileges—and remember, not one of them should we have without Adam. Well, then, he ought to have a monument.
—New York Times, 1883
Man is kind enough when he is not excited by religion.
—“A Horse’s Tale”
One mustn’t criticize other people on grounds where he can’t stand perpendicular himself.
—A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (1889)
We despise all reverences and all the objects of reverence which are outside the pale of our own list of sacred things. And yet, with strange inconsistency, we are shocked when other people despise and defile the things which are holy to us.
—Following the Equator (1897)
It is a civilization which has destroyed the simplicity and repose of life; replaced its contentment, its poetry, its soft romance-dreams and visions with the money-fever, sordid ideals, vulgar ambitions, and the sleep which does not refresh; it has invented a thousand useless luxuries, and turned them into necessities; it has created a thousand vicious appetites and satisfies none of them; it has dethroned God and set up a shekel in His place.
—“Papers of the Adam Family”
The easy confidence with which I know another man’s religion is folly teaches me to suspect that my own is also. I would not interfere with any one’s religion, either to strengthen it or to weaken it. I am not able to believe one’s religion can affect his hereafter one way or the other, no matter what that religion may be. But it may easily be a great comfort to him in this life—hence it is a valuable possession to him.
—quoted in Mark Twain: A Biography (1912)
by Albert Bigelow Paine
Neither should ever be uttered. The man who speaks an injurious truth, lest his soul be not saved if he do otherwise, should reflect that that sort of a soul is not strictly worth saving.
—“On the Decay of the Art of Lying”
Being made merely in the image of God, but not otherwise resembling him enough to be mistaken by anybody but a very near-sighted person.
—letter to his sister, Pamela (undated)
Ah, well, I am a great and sublime fool. But then I am God’s fool, and all His work must be contemplated with respect.
—quoted in Mark Twain: A Biography (1912)
by Albert Bigelow Paine
