MORE AMAZING QUOTES
From that book I actually haven't read much of lately, but I got to talking about it with Ocelot, so here's some of what I typed up:
STORY TIME:
I will tell you a pleasant tale which has in it a touch of pathos. A man got religion, and asked the priest what he must do to be worth of his new estate. The priest said, "Imitate our Father in Heaven, learn to be like him." The man studied his Bible diligently and thoroughly and understandingly, and then with prayer for heavenly guidance instituted his imitation. he tricked his wife into falling downstairs, and she broke her back and became a paralytic for life; he betrayed his brother into the hands of a sharper, who robbed him of all and landed him in the almshouse; he inoculated one son with hookworms, another with the sleeping sickness, another with gonorrhea; he furnished one daughter with scarlet fever and ushered her into her teens deaf, dumb, and blind for life; and after helping a rascal seduce the remaining one, he closed his doors against her and she died in a brothel cursing him. Then he reported to the priest, who said that that was no way to imitate his Father in Heaven. The convert asked where he had failed, but the priest changed the subject and inquired what kind of weather he was having, up his way.
Regarding Adam and Eve and the Fruit of Knowledge of Good and Evil:
Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit, and at once a great light streamed into their dim heads. hey had acquired knowledge. What knowledge -- useful knowledge? No -- merely knowledge that there was such as thing as good, and such a thing as evil, and how to do evil. They couldn't do it before. Therefore all their acts up to this time had been without stain, without blame, without offense.
But now they could do evil -- and suffer for it; now they had acquired what the Church calls an invaluable possession, the Moral Sense; that sense which differentiates man from the beast and sets him above the beast. Instead of below the beast -- where one would suppose his proper place would be, since he is always foul-minded and guilty and the beast is always clean-minded and innocent. It is like valuing a watch that must go wrong above a watch that can't.
Regarding Jealousy:
You are aware -- for I have already told you in an earlier letter -- that among human being jealousy ranks distinctly as a weakness; a trade-mark of small minds; a property of all small minds, yet a property which even the smallest is ashamed of; and when accused of its possession will lyingly deny it and resent the accusation as an insult.
Jealousy. Do not forget it, keep it in mind. It is the key. With it you will come to parly understand him. As I have said, he has openly held up this treasonous key himself, for all to see. He says, naively, outspokenly, and without suggestion of embarrassment: "I the Lord they God am a jealous God."
You see, it is only another way of saying, "I the Lord thy God am a small God; a small God and fretful about small things."
On Disease:
Science has this to say about the Sleeping Sickness, otherwise called the Negro Lethargy:
"It is characterized by periods of sleep recurring at intervals. The disease lasts from four months to four years and is always fatal. The victim appears at first languid, weak, pallid and stupid. His eyelids become puffy, an eruption appears on his skin. He falls asleep while talking, eating or working. As the disease progresses he is fed with difficulty and becomes much emaciated. The failure of nutrition and the appearance of bedsores are followed by convulsions and death. Some patients become insane."
It is he whom Church and people call Our Father in heaven who has invented the fly and sent him to inflict this dreary long misery and melancholy and wretchedness, and decay of body and mind, upon a poor savage who has done the Great Criminal no harm. There isn't a man in the world who doesn't pity that poor black sufferer, and there isn't a man that wouldn't make him whole if he could. To find the one person who has no pity for him you must got heaven; to find the one person who is able to heal him and couldn't be persuaded to do it, you must go the same place. There is only one father cruel enough to afflict his child with that horrible disease - only one. Not all the eternities can produce another one.
On Sex:
The law of God, as quite plainly expressed in woman's construction, is this: There shall be no limited put upon your intercourse with the other sex sexually, at any time of life.
The law of God, as quite plainly expressed in man's construction, is this: During your entire life you shall be under inflexible limits and restrictions, sexually.
[. . .]
By the woman's make, her plant has to be out of service three day in a month and during a part of her pregnancy. These are times of discomfort, often suffering. For fair and just compensation she has the high privilege of unlimited adultery all the other days of her life.
That is the law of God, as revealed in her make. What becomes of this high privilege? Does she live in the free enjoyment of it? No. Nowhere in the whole world. She is robbed of it everywhere. Who does this? Man. Man's statutes - if the Bible is the Word of God.
Now there you have a sample of man's "reasoning powers," as he calls them. He observes certain facts. For instance, that in all his life he never sees the day that he can satisfy one woman; also, that no woman ever sees the day she can't overwork, and defeat, and put out of commission any ten masculine plants that can be put to bed to her. He puts those strikingly suggestive and luminous facts together, and from them draws the astonishing conclusion: The Creator intended the woman to be restricted to one man.
So he concretes that singular conclusion into a law, for good and all.
And he does it without consulting the woman, although she has a thousand times more at stake in the matter than he has. His procreative competency is limited to an average of a hundred exercises per year for fifty years, her is good for three thousand a year for that whole time - and and as many years longer as she may live. Thus his life interest in the matter is five thousand refreshments, while hers is a hundred and fifty thousand; yet instead of fairly and honorable leaving the making of the law to the person who has and overwhelming interested at stake in it, this immeasurable hog, who has nothing at stake in it worth considering, makes it himself!
You have heretofore found out, by my teachings, that man is a fool; you are now aware that woman is a damned fool.
-Mark Twain, Letters from the Earth
STORY TIME:
I will tell you a pleasant tale which has in it a touch of pathos. A man got religion, and asked the priest what he must do to be worth of his new estate. The priest said, "Imitate our Father in Heaven, learn to be like him." The man studied his Bible diligently and thoroughly and understandingly, and then with prayer for heavenly guidance instituted his imitation. he tricked his wife into falling downstairs, and she broke her back and became a paralytic for life; he betrayed his brother into the hands of a sharper, who robbed him of all and landed him in the almshouse; he inoculated one son with hookworms, another with the sleeping sickness, another with gonorrhea; he furnished one daughter with scarlet fever and ushered her into her teens deaf, dumb, and blind for life; and after helping a rascal seduce the remaining one, he closed his doors against her and she died in a brothel cursing him. Then he reported to the priest, who said that that was no way to imitate his Father in Heaven. The convert asked where he had failed, but the priest changed the subject and inquired what kind of weather he was having, up his way.
Regarding Adam and Eve and the Fruit of Knowledge of Good and Evil:
Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit, and at once a great light streamed into their dim heads. hey had acquired knowledge. What knowledge -- useful knowledge? No -- merely knowledge that there was such as thing as good, and such a thing as evil, and how to do evil. They couldn't do it before. Therefore all their acts up to this time had been without stain, without blame, without offense.
But now they could do evil -- and suffer for it; now they had acquired what the Church calls an invaluable possession, the Moral Sense; that sense which differentiates man from the beast and sets him above the beast. Instead of below the beast -- where one would suppose his proper place would be, since he is always foul-minded and guilty and the beast is always clean-minded and innocent. It is like valuing a watch that must go wrong above a watch that can't.
Regarding Jealousy:
You are aware -- for I have already told you in an earlier letter -- that among human being jealousy ranks distinctly as a weakness; a trade-mark of small minds; a property of all small minds, yet a property which even the smallest is ashamed of; and when accused of its possession will lyingly deny it and resent the accusation as an insult.
Jealousy. Do not forget it, keep it in mind. It is the key. With it you will come to parly understand him. As I have said, he has openly held up this treasonous key himself, for all to see. He says, naively, outspokenly, and without suggestion of embarrassment: "I the Lord they God am a jealous God."
You see, it is only another way of saying, "I the Lord thy God am a small God; a small God and fretful about small things."
On Disease:
Science has this to say about the Sleeping Sickness, otherwise called the Negro Lethargy:
"It is characterized by periods of sleep recurring at intervals. The disease lasts from four months to four years and is always fatal. The victim appears at first languid, weak, pallid and stupid. His eyelids become puffy, an eruption appears on his skin. He falls asleep while talking, eating or working. As the disease progresses he is fed with difficulty and becomes much emaciated. The failure of nutrition and the appearance of bedsores are followed by convulsions and death. Some patients become insane."
It is he whom Church and people call Our Father in heaven who has invented the fly and sent him to inflict this dreary long misery and melancholy and wretchedness, and decay of body and mind, upon a poor savage who has done the Great Criminal no harm. There isn't a man in the world who doesn't pity that poor black sufferer, and there isn't a man that wouldn't make him whole if he could. To find the one person who has no pity for him you must got heaven; to find the one person who is able to heal him and couldn't be persuaded to do it, you must go the same place. There is only one father cruel enough to afflict his child with that horrible disease - only one. Not all the eternities can produce another one.
On Sex:
The law of God, as quite plainly expressed in woman's construction, is this: There shall be no limited put upon your intercourse with the other sex sexually, at any time of life.
The law of God, as quite plainly expressed in man's construction, is this: During your entire life you shall be under inflexible limits and restrictions, sexually.
[. . .]
By the woman's make, her plant has to be out of service three day in a month and during a part of her pregnancy. These are times of discomfort, often suffering. For fair and just compensation she has the high privilege of unlimited adultery all the other days of her life.
That is the law of God, as revealed in her make. What becomes of this high privilege? Does she live in the free enjoyment of it? No. Nowhere in the whole world. She is robbed of it everywhere. Who does this? Man. Man's statutes - if the Bible is the Word of God.
Now there you have a sample of man's "reasoning powers," as he calls them. He observes certain facts. For instance, that in all his life he never sees the day that he can satisfy one woman; also, that no woman ever sees the day she can't overwork, and defeat, and put out of commission any ten masculine plants that can be put to bed to her. He puts those strikingly suggestive and luminous facts together, and from them draws the astonishing conclusion: The Creator intended the woman to be restricted to one man.
So he concretes that singular conclusion into a law, for good and all.
And he does it without consulting the woman, although she has a thousand times more at stake in the matter than he has. His procreative competency is limited to an average of a hundred exercises per year for fifty years, her is good for three thousand a year for that whole time - and and as many years longer as she may live. Thus his life interest in the matter is five thousand refreshments, while hers is a hundred and fifty thousand; yet instead of fairly and honorable leaving the making of the law to the person who has and overwhelming interested at stake in it, this immeasurable hog, who has nothing at stake in it worth considering, makes it himself!
You have heretofore found out, by my teachings, that man is a fool; you are now aware that woman is a damned fool.
-Mark Twain, Letters from the Earth