A CURIOUS DREAM.
from Sketches New and Old (1875)
Mark Twain made it to seventy-four—all in all, not a bad run for that time. Perhaps by modifying his habits a bit more, he would have given himself a few more years. But then he would have missed his appointed rendezvous with Halley’s Comet in 1910. He wouldn’t have missed that for the world. “I came in with Halley’s Comet in 1835,” he said in 1909. “It’s coming again next year, and I expect go out with it. It will be the greatest disappointment of my life if I don’t go out with Halley’s Comet. The Almighty has said, no doubt, ‘Now here are these two unaccountable freaks; they came in together, they must go out together.’ Oh! I am looking forward to that.”
Whoever has lived long enough to find out what life is, knows how deep a debt of gratitude we owe to Adam, the first great benefactor of our race. He brought death into the world.
—Pudd’nhead Wilson (1894)
I think we never become really and genuinely our entire and honest selves until we are dead—and not then until we have been dead years and years. People ought to start dead, and they would be honest so much earlier.
—Mark Twain in Eruption (1940)
It is a pathetic thought. We struggle, we rise, we tower in the zenith a brief and gorgeous moment, with the adoring eyes of the nations upon us, then the lights go out, oblivion closes around us, our glory fades and vanishes, a few generations drift by, and naught remains but a mystery and a name.
—“The Secret History of Eddypus”
Pity is for the living, envy is for the dead.
—Following the Equator (1897)
All say, “How hard it is that we have to die”—a strange complaint to come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
—Pudd’nhead Wilson (1894)
Each person is born to one possession which outvalues all his others—his last breath.
—Following the Equator (1897)
The Impartial Friend: Death, the only immortal who treats us all alike, whose pity and whose peace and whose refuge are for all—the soiled and the pure, the rich and the poor, the loved and the unloved.
—last written statement, in
Moments With Mark Twain (Albert Bigelow Paine)
Palmists, clairvoyants, seers, and other kinds of fortune tellers all tell me that I am going to die, and I have the utmost admiration for their prediction. Perhaps they would convince me a little more of its truth if they told me the date.
—The New York Times (1907)
Death . . . a great Leveler—a king before whose tremendous majesty shades & differences in littleness cannot be discerned—an Alp from whose summit all small things are the same size.
—1871 letter
Both marriage and death ought to be welcome: the one promises happiness, doubtless the other assures it.
—1888 letter
I think this funeral is going to be a great thing. I shall be there . . . Shall I have a band? Land! I shall have fifty bands, falling over one another at every fifty yards, and each playing a different tune. It’ll be a showy funeral, with plenty of liquor for the guests.
—The New York Times (1907)
Why there was a lady on board asked me to come to her wedding. “Yes,” I replied. “I will if you’ll come to my funeral.” I told her all about it, and now she’s quite eager for it to happen.
—The New York Times (1907)
As for me, I hope to be cremated. I made that remark to my pastor once, who said, with what he seemed to think was an impressive manner: “I wouldn’t worry about that, if I had your chances.”
—Life on the Mississippi (1883)
Epitaphs are cheap, and they do a poor chap a world of good after he is dead, especially if he had hard luck while he was alive. I wish they were used more.
—“A Curious Dream”
A distinguished man should be as particular about his last words as he is about his last breath. He should write them out on a slip of paper and take the judgment of his friends on them. He should never leave such a thing to the last hour of his life, and trust to an intellectual spurt at the last moment to enable him to say something smart with his latest gasp and launch into eternity with grandeur.
—“The Last Words of Great Men” (1869)
Heaven for climate, and hell for society.
—1901 speech
Travel has no longer any charm for me. I have seen all the foreign countries I want to except heaven & hell & I have only a vague curiosity about one of those.
—1891 letter
[Heaven and hell] I am silent on the subject because of necessity. I have friends in both places.
—quoted in Mark Twain, His Life and Work,
by Will Clemens
When I reflect upon the number of disagreeable people who I know have gone to a better world, I am moved to lead a different life.
—Pudd’nhead Wilson (1894)
Miss Watson, a tolerable slim old maid, with goggles on . . . told me all about the bad place, and I said I wished I was there. She got mad then, but I didn’t mean no harm. All I wanted was to go somewheres; all I wanted was a change, I warn’t particular. She said it was wicked to say what I said; said she wouldn’t say it for the whole world; she was going to live so as to go to the good place. Well, I couldn’t see no advantage in going where she was going, so I made up my mind I wouldn’t try for it. But I never said so, because it would only make trouble, and wouldn’t do no good.
—Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885)
I have never seen what to me seemed an atom of proof that there is a future life. And yet—I am inclined to expect one.
—quoted in Mark Twain: A Biography (1912)
by Albert Bigelow Paine
Satan (impatiently) to New Comer. The trouble with you Chicago people is, that you think you are the best people down here; whereas you are merely the most numerous.
—Following the Equator (1897)
Heaven goes by favor. If it went by merit, you would stay out and your dog would go in.
—quoted in Mark Twain: A Biography (1912)
by Albert Bigelow Paine
