The TAO of Mark Twain Trivia Quiz

Answer: Carlyle said "a lie cannot live." It shows that he did not know how to tell them.

The "terminological inexactitude" quote that Alexander Haig uttered may represent the "dead on arrival" sort of lie about which Carlyle spoke. I doubt that Sam Clemens would ever have written an affected metaphor such as Aleister Crowley's "child of fear".

It seemed to me that Twain could plausibly have written the Steven Soderbergh's "alcoholism" quote; therefore it served as my distracter for this question.

Answer: Jane Austen

Jane Austen's carefully crafted and elegantly phrased accounts of England's privileged class would seem to be the antithesis of Twain's rough and tumble novels. The creator of Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer no doubt loathed Austen's Elisabeth Bennett and Mr. Darcy. Twain avowed, "Every time I read 'Pride and Prejudice' I want to dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone." Twain also opined, "Jane is entirely impossible.

It seems a great pity that they allowed her to die a natural death."

Answer: The object of education is to prepare the young to educate themselves throughout their lives.

Mark Twain left school at the age of 12. Although it is tempting to assume that Twain was hostile toward formal education, in 1917 one of Twain's opinions was posthumously published. He wrote, "The self taught man seldom knows anything accurately, and he does not know a tenth as much as he could have known if he had worked under teachers, and besides, he brags, and is the means of fooling other thoughtless people into going and doing as he himself has done."

Answer: The highest perfection of politeness is only a beautiful edifice, built, from the base to the dome, of graceful and gilded forms of charitable and unselfish lying.

In his notebook Mark Twain tells us, "Good breeding consists in concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of the other person." In 1923, in "Marienbad--A Health Factory", Twain suggests a method for dealing with unmannerly behavior in others. Twain writes, "It is a mistake that there is no bath that will cure people's manners. But drowning would help."

Answer: [Man] is the only animal that loves his neighbor as himself and cuts his throat if his theology isn't straight.

In evaluating any author, particularly Mark Twain, I think one does well to distinguish between an author's view of religious theology and the author's attitude toward the religious beliefs of ordinary people. The latter may be wholly respected at the same time that the former is abhorred. Mark Twain wrote, "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."

Note: the incorrect use of "which" with an absence of a comma in the animal/medicine quote has been duly noted but was present in the original.

Answer: The political and commercial morals of the United States

Mark Twain touched on the topic of refinement in "Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar" where he wrote, "She was not quite what you would call refined. She was not quite what you would call unrefined. She was the kind of person that keeps a parrot." Regarding the press, Twain quipped, "There are laws to protect the freedom of the press's speech, but none that are worth anything to protect the people from the press." He expressed the following view of people who indulge in practical jokes as adults: "They have lived narrow, obscure, and ignorant lives, and at full manhood they still retain and cherish a job-lot of left-over standards and ideals that would have been discarded with their boyhood if they had then moved out into the world and a broader life."

Answer: When you find yourself on the side of the majority

In saying, "Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to reform (or pause and reflect)," Mark Twain expressed his distrust of conformity rather than his views on reform. Twain better delineated his views on reform as it applies to the individual in his autobiography where he wrote "In my early manhood and in middle life I used to vex myself with reforms every now and then. And I never had occasion to regret these divergencies for, whether the resulting deprivations were long or short, the rewarding pleasure which I got out of the vice when I returned to it always paid me for all that it cost."

Answer: Scientists have odious manners, except when you prop up their theory; then you can borrow money of them.

Marie Curie made the comment about sadistic scientists; Dave Barry enlightened us regarding mammary function; and Terry Pratchett reminded us of a type of gullibility not unique to scientists.

Answer: Endurance

Mark Twain expressed his view on feminine consistency in the "Gilded Age" saying, "The reason novelists nearly always fail in depicting women when they make them act, is that they let them do what they have observed some woman has done at some time or another. And that is where they make a mistake; for a woman will never do again what has been done before." With respect to agree ability Twain remarked, "Women cannot receive even the most palpably judicious suggestion without arguing it; that is, married women."

Answer: Any crime

Barbara Holland has said, "A catless writer is almost inconceivable." Doubtless, Mark Twain would agree. He admitted to finding felines irresistible. "I simply can't resist a cat, particularly a purring one. They are the cleanest, cunningest, and most intelligent things I know, outside of the girl you love, of course." The sometimes misanthropic author also maintained, "If man could be crossed with the cat it would improve man, but it would deteriorate the cat."