"What did he say?"

Did you know that a little known hobby of Mark Twain’s was making scrapbooks? In fact, he was so devoted to the craft that he patented a form of adhesive album page.  Mark Twain was a lifelong creator and keeper of scrapbooks. He took them with him everywhere and filled them with souvenirs, pictures, and articles about his books and performances. But in time, he grew tired of the lost glue, rock-hard paste. He came up with the idea of printing thin strips of glue on the pages to make updates neat and easy. In 1872, he patented his “self-pasting” scrapbook, and by 1901, at least 57 different types of his albums were available. It would be his only invention that ever made money.  (Source:  http://www.pbs.org/marktwain/scrapbook/index.html)

Source: http://etext.virginia.edu/railton/marketin/scrpbook.html 

Mark Twain Food-Related Quotes

What I cannot help wishing is, that Adam and Eve had been postponed, and Martin Luther and Joan of Arc put in their place – that splendid pair equipped with temperaments not made of butter, but of asbestos.  By neither sugary persuasions nor by hellfire 

could Satan have beguiled them to eat the apple.

Mark Twain, 1910

What a fool old Adam was.  Had everything his own way;

had succeeded in gaining the love of the best looking girl in the neighborhood, but yet unsatisfied with his conquest he had to eat a miserable little apple.

Mark Twain, 1859

What is fame! Fame is an accident.  Sir Isaac Newton

discovered an apple falling to the ground – a trivial discovery,

truly, and one which a million men had made before

him – but his parents were influential, and so they tortured the

small circumstance into something wonderful, and lo!

the simple world took up the shout, and, in almost the twinkling

 of an eye, that man was famous.

Mark Twain, 1868

We picked up one excellent word – a word worth traveling to New Orleans

to get; a nice limber, expressive handy word – “Lagniappe.” 

They pronounce it lanny-yap …It is the equivalent of the

thirteenth roll in a baker’s dozen.” It is something thrown

in, gratis, for good measure.

Mark Twain, 1883 

On the Continent you can’t get a rare

beefsteak – everything is as overdone as a martyr.

Mark Twain, 1897

A full belly is little worth where the mind

is starved, and the heart.

Mark Twain, 1881

A bad person can be as hungry as a good one,

and hunger is always respectable.

  Mark Twain, 1898

The ordinary chestnut can beget a sickly and reluctant laugh,

 but it takes a horse chestnut to fetch the gorgeous big horse-laugh.

Mark Twain

The North seldom tries to fry chicken, and this is well;

the art cannot be learned north of the line of Mason and Dixon,

 not anywhere in Europe.  This is not hearsay;

it is experience that is speaking.

Mark Twain, 1897

Perhaps no bread in the world is quite as good as southern corn bread,

and perhaps no bread in the world is quite so bad as

the Northern imitation of it.

Mark Twain, 1897

Respectability butters no parsnips …

Mark Twain, 1906

Training is everything.  The peach was once a bitter almond;

cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education.

Mark Twain, 1894

I know a good deal more than a boiled carrot,

though I may not appear to.

Mark Twain, 1865

Never refused to do a kindness unless the act would

work great injury to yourself and never refuse

 to take a drink – under any circumstances.

Mark Twain, 1866

When I was two years of age she (my grandmother) asked me not to drink,

 and then I made a resolution of total abstinence. 

That I have adhered to it and enjoyed the beneficent effects

of it through all time.  I owe to my grandmother.

 I have never drunk a drop from that day to this of any kind of water.

Mark Twain, 1870

Noise proves nothing. Often a hen who has merely

 laid an egg cackles as if she had laid an asteroid.

  Mark Twain, 1897

I have never taken any exercise, except sleeping and resting,

and I never intend to take any. Exercise is loathsome. 

And it cannot be any benefit when you are tired; and I was always tired.

Mark Twain, 1905

Time and hash wait for no man.

  Mark Twain, 1867

I know the taste of the watermelon which has been

honestly come by, and I know the taste of the watermelon

which has been acquired by art.  Both taste good,

but the experienced know which tastes best.

Mark Twain, 1897

On poi –

A villainous mixture it is, almost tasteless before it

ferments and too sour for a luxury afterward.

Mark Twain, 1866

This berry is a favorite with the natives of the interior of

New England, who prefer it to the gooseberry for the making of fruit-cake,

and who likewise give it the preference over the

raspberry for feeding cows, as being more filling and fully

as satisfying.  The pumpkin is the only esculent of the orange

 family that will thrive in the North, except the gourd

and one or two varieties of the squash.

Mark Twain, 1870

I thought tamerinds were made to eat, but that was probably

 not the idea. I ate several, and it seemed to me that they

were rather sour that year.  They pursed my lips, till they

resembled the stem-end of a tomato, and I had to take my

 sustenance through a quill for twenty-four hours.

Mark Twain, 1872

We don’t care to eat toadstools

that think they are truffles.

  Mark Twain, 1894

(Source: The Quotable Mark Twain: His Essential Aphorisms, Witticisms & Concise Opinions, edited by R. Kent Rasmussen)

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