Today is the 176th birthday of Mark Twain. You know someone is important when we continue to have birthdays for him after he has died. Mark Twain, born Samuel Langhorne Clemens, is definitely one of those people. I cannot remember the first time I read a Mark Twain work; it was elementary school. He was part of my required studies all throughout high school and college, and I still enjoy his pieces. My friend, Larry, talks about Mark Twain often. He laughs every time. How can he not? Mark Twain quipped eloquently. As I work to improve my writing, I find inspiration, encouragement, and education in Twain’s words. Thanks to Twain Quotes for the following:

“You need not expect to get your book right the first time. Go to work and revamp or rewrite it. God only exhibits his thunder and lightning at intervals, and so they always command attention. These are God’s adjectives. You thunder and lightning too much; the reader ceases to get under the bed, by and by.” – Letter to Orion Clemens, 23 March 1878

“The time to begin writing an article is when you have finished it to your satisfaction. By that time you begin to clearly and logically perceive what it is that you really want to say.” – Mark Twain’s Notebook, 1902-1903

“To get the right word in the right place is a rare achievement. To condense the diffused light of a page of thought into the luminous flash of a single sentence, is worthy to rank as a prize composition just by itself…Anybody can have ideas–the difficulty is to express them without squandering a quire of paper on an idea that ought to be reduced to one glittering paragraph.” – Letter to Emeline Beach, 10 Feb 1868

“Let us guess that whenever we read a sentence & like it, we unconsciously store it away in our model-chamber; & it goes, with the myriad of its fellows, to the building, brick by brick, of the eventual edifice which we call our style.” – Letter to George Bainton, 15 Oct 1888; (first printed in The Art of Authorship: Literary Reminiscences, Methods of Work, and Advice to Young Beginners, Personally Contributed by Leading Authors of the Day. Compiled and Edited by George Bainton. New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1890, pp. 85-88.)

“I notice that you use plain, simple language, short words and brief sentences. That is the way to write English – it is the modern way and the best way. Stick to it; don’t let fluff and flowers and verbosity creep in. When you catch an adjective, kill it. No, I don’t mean utterly, but kill most of them – then the rest will be valuable. They weaken when they are close together. They give strength when they are wide apart. An adjective habit, or a wordy, diffuse, flowery habit, once fastened upon a person, is as hard to get rid of as any other vice.” – Letter to D. W. Bowser, 20 March 1880

Happy birthday, Mr. Twain. Happy birthday.