Mark Twain quipped, ‘I have never let my schooling interfere with myeducation.’

“Substantially all ideas are second-hand, consciously and unconsciously drawn from a million outside sources, and daily use by the garnerer with a pride and satisfaction born of the superstition that he originated them.”Mark Twain

Only recently has "memory training" become a butt of ridicule and a refuge of charlatans.

None of us can have as many virtues as the fountain-pen, or half its cussedness; but we can try. - Following the Equator, Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar

In 1887, Twain crossed paths with Professor Loisette a ‘memory doctor’ who made a living peddling a system of memory techniques bearing his name. Inductees into the “Loisette system” were sworn to secrecy, and charged the modern equivalent of five hundred dollars to learn the “natural laws of memory” which the doctor claimed to have discovered. Twain enrolled in a several-week-long course and at first was deeply impressed, even going so far as to publish a testimonial in favour of the Loisette system.

In 1885, he patented “Mark Twain’s Memory Builder: A Game for Acquiring and Retaining All Sorts of Facts and Dates.”

Christian Nestell Bovee often receives credit for the quote. “Kindness: a language which the dumb can speak and the deaf can understand,” he wrote in his 1857 book “Thoughts, Feelings, and Fancies.”

“Oh, my dearest dear sir, I want to take back what I said. You have got a situation open that I want.” “Name it.” “Son-in-law.”

raised my salary to twelve hundred the first year on the spot.

So I loved her all the more, seeing she could be so cheerful when there wasn’t anything to be cheerful about

The English never play any game for amusement

whom I fell in love with in two minutes

My month ended, my employer back from his journey, I should be all right once more, for I should at once divide the two years’ salary among my creditors by assignment, and get right down to my work.

so as to have the old pleasure of buying trifles, and being insulted, and then shooting the scoffer dead with the million-pound bill.

and so, pauper as I was, I had money to spend, and was living like the rich and the great.

My opinion of those people changed, I can tell you!

a clean reputation

What could his conduct mean?  It might mean—it might—mean—oh, a dozen dreadful things.

the sermon seemed to bristle with accusations; it seemed aimed straight and specially at people who were concealing deadly sins.

“I—I wish I were dead, Mary, I wish I were out of it all!”

It seems written with fire—it burns so.  Mary—I am miserable again.

“Dr.”

“Friends, they are only gilded disks of lead!”

Incorruptible

Any other man would have been content to kill one or two of you and call it square, but to me that would have been a trivial revenge, and inadequate; for the dead do not suffer.

your community’s noble reputation for incorruptible honesty

“Oh, saw my leg off!”

There is nothing in the world like a persuasive speech to fuddle the mental apparatus and upset the convictions and debauch the emotions of an audience not practised in the tricks and delusions of oratory. 

That kind don’t count their chickens until they are hatched.

During that one night the nineteen wives spent an average of seven thousand dollars each out of the forty thousand in the sack—a hundred and thirty-three thousand altogether.

They were exact copies of the letter received by Richards—handwriting and all—and were all signed by Stephenson, but in place of Richards’s name each receiver’s own name appeared.

that she carried a spoonful of negro blood in her veins.

but in some way or other the match had been broken off; the girl died, Goodson remained a bachelor, and by-and-by became a soured one and a frank despiser of the human species. 

In fact it went on looking better and better, straight along—until by-and-by it grew into positive proof. 

oh dear, he had put Richards on his honour! 

Mary was planning what she would do with the money. 

In all your life you have never uttered a lie.

Everybody believes there was only one good generous soul in this village

Halliday’s comments grew daily more and more sparklingly disagreeable and disparaging.

“Ah, what could have been the remark that Goodson made?”

Hadleyburg, synonym for incorruptible

so it’s artificial honesty,

guessed that the late Goodson was the only man in the town who could have helped a suffering stranger with so noble a sum as twenty dollars.

he may be too late—too late

Lead us not into t . . . but—but—we are so poor, so poor! . . . Lead us not into . . . Ah, who would be hurt by it?—and no one would ever know . . . Lead us . . .

Very well, then, tell them to go to hell—I reckon that’s general enough.  And I’ll give you some advice, Sawlsberry; when you come back for the particulars, fetch a basket to carry what is left of yourself home in.’

And of course he didn’t care. 

If the town had found it out—

What troubles me now is, what he thinks of us, Edward

“I—I don’t think it would have done for you to—to—One mustn’t—er—public opinion—one has to be so careful—so—”

I could have saved him, and—and—well, you know how the town was wrought up—I hadn’t the pluck to do it. 

The whole of his unpopularity had its foundation in that one thing—the thing that made so much noise.

And it will make all the other towns jealous

and it is fast getting along toward burglar-time.

all we’ve got to do is to bury the money and burn the papers.  If the gambler ever comes to inquire, we’ll merely look coldly upon him and say: ‘What is this nonsense you are talking?  We have never heard of you and your sack of gold before;’

Why, it’s a romance; it’s like the impossible things one reads about in books, and never sees in life.

we have our livelihood; we have our good name

the wages of sin

who set his bread afloat upon the waters

This sack contains gold coin weighing a hundred and sixty pounds four ounces—”

but what he wanted was a plan which would comprehend the entire town, and not let so much as one person escape unhurt. 

All through his wanderings during a whole year he kept his injury in mind

and cared not a rap for strangers or their opinions.

Hadleyburg had the ill luck to offend a passing stranger

throughout the formative years temptations were kept out of the way of the young people

It had kept that reputation unsmirched during three generations, and was prouder of it than of any other of its possessions.