Some Mark Twain Forum member who has charge of a few sharp and
enterprising graduate students ought to turn one of them loose on a study
of these bogus and dubious "Mark Twain quotes." Even a light content
analysis would be revealing of how we have defined and shaped our idea of
Mark Twain and his wisdom through these fictionalized representations. And
I imagine that the creation of phony Twainisms has probably accelerated
wildly since the popularization of the web.

Judging from the number of us who have responded to this question about
these alleged quotations, it appears that there is a healthy amount of
curiosity about what he did and did not say; a good study of this subject,
even a small book, would perform a real service.

I was recently given a refrigerator magnet, which I was told was sold at
the Mark Twain House in Hartford. The magnet featured a supposed Mark
Twain quotation, "Denial ain't just a river in Egypt." I must admit, this
sounds spurious to me. I didn't know that "denial" in its modern pop-psych
meaning was all that common 100 years ago. But that is why the whole issue
needs study; how are we to know if a quotation is real or not?

Paul Schullery




-----Original Message-----
From: <[log in to unmask]>
Reply-To: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Monday, August 20, 2012 12:36 PM
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Twain on Moderation?

Terry, 


Oscar Wilde died too soon; he owes you one.


Well said, and happy retirement!


Ben 


----- Original Message -----
From: "Terry Ballard" <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Monday, August 20, 2012 1:48:50 PM
Subject: Re: Twain on Moderation?

I used to say "Moderation is a good thing as long as you don't take it to
extremes." Sadly as far as I can tell, Twain didn't say the one about
moderation in moderation. When checking out one of these, I usually go to
Google Books and search ending in 1920. True that he said some gems in
speeches that may not have made it to print in his lifetime, but a zero
hit 
count is pretty telling. Unless it turns up in a speech, this goes to that
mountainous scrap heap of things that sound like Twain but aren't.

Also, in case anyone out there is following my adventures, as of the 31st
I'm removing lines 2-5 on my sig file below, to be replaced with "Retired
Librarian." 


Terry Ballard 
Assistant Director of Technical Services for Library Systems
The New York Law School
185 West Broadway, New York, NY, 10013
212-431-2106 
http://www.terryballard.org
Author of the book "Google this" http://googlethisforlibraries.com

"My memory has a mind of its own."