Nov
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5th
Mark Twain: ‘Biographies are but the clothes and buttons of the man’
“What a wee little part of a person’s life are his acts and his words! His real life is led in his head, and is known to none but himself. All day long, the mill of his brain is grinding, and his thoughts, not those of other things, are his history. (…)
These are his life, and they are not written, and cannot be written. Everyday would make a whole book of eighty thousand words - three hundred and sixty-five books a year. Biographies are but the clothes and buttons of the man — the biography of the man himself cannot be written.”
Mark Twain captured on film by Thomas Edison in 1909 at Stormfield (CT). Twain is shown walkng around his home and playing cards with his daughters Clara and Jean. It’s apparently the only known footage of the author.
“What a wee little part of a person’s life are his acts and his words! His real life is led in his head, and is known to none but himself. All day long, the mill of his brain is grinding, and his thoughts, not those of other things, are his history. (…)
These are his life, and they are not written, and cannot be written. Everyday would make a whole book of eighty thousand words - three hundred and sixty-five books a year. Biographies are but the clothes and buttons of the man — the biography of the man himself cannot be written.”
Mark Twain captured on film by Thomas Edison in 1909 at Stormfield (CT). Twain is shown walkng around his home and playing cards with his daughters Clara and Jean. It’s apparently the only known footage of the author.
— Mark Twain, American author and humorist (1835-1910), Mark Twain’s Autobiography, Volume 1 (1870), Kessinger Publishing, 2003, p.2.
