What was Mark Twain’s speechwriting philosophy?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is a useful article by Steve Siebold at LinkedIn Pulse on July 24, 2026 titled Mark Twain’s Speechwriting Philosophy? He says that:

 

“Twain was one of the most successful professional speakers of his time. He was also a master wordsmith who believed deeply in the discipline of world-class writing. He is famously quoted as saying:

 

‘The difference between the right word and the almost right word is like the difference between lightning and the lightning bug.’

 

That distinction is the heart of great speechwriting.

 

The almost right word communicates the idea. The right word makes the audience feel it. The almost right word fills the sentence. The right word brings the sentence to life. The almost right word earns polite attention. The right word can produce laughter, silence, tension, emotion, or a standing ovation.

 

…If you want to become a stronger professional speaker, become a more disciplined speechwriter. Stop settling for language that is close enough. Search for the precise word, the sharper sentence, the cleaner transition, and the more powerful ending. Write it. Deliver it. Study the reaction. Rewrite it. Then repeat the process until the vignette sounds effortless.”

 

But that simile wasn’t quite what Twain said. It is a paraphrase, an example of the almost-right words. I blogged about it back on February 3, 2015 in a post titled Missing the boat by botching a quote. What Mark really said was that:

 

“The difference between the almost-right word & the right word is really a large matter - it’s the difference between the lightning-bug & the lightning.”

 

And on July 16, 2024 I blogged about Making fine distinctions: Using the right word versus the almost-right word.

 

An etching of Mark Twain came from the Library of Congress.

 

 

Idaho’s Wassmuth Center for Human Rights celebrates its thirtieth anniversary

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

An article by Valentin Termite at the Idaho Capital Sun on June 18, 2026 is titled Believing in the goodness of people: Idaho human rights center celebrates 30-year anniversary. It links to their web page on Wassmuth Powerful Practices, which briefly are titled (and then also explained in detail):

 

Collect Joy

Design for Belonging

Listen Deeply

Stay Curious

Notice and Name Bright Spots

Align Actions with Values

 

To collect joy you should:

 

“Notice, savor, and share moments of connection, warmth, and delight as expressions of human dignity and belonging. Paying attention to what is life-giving cultivates hope and sustains commitment to building a better world for all.” 

 

And, to listen deeply you should:

 

“Offer your full presence to another person without interruption, judgment, or trying to fix. Seeking to understand feelings, perspectives, and needs affirms that every person matters.” 

 

On October 27, 2024 I blogged about A new building at Boise’s Wassmuth Center for Human Rights with quotations carved in stone.

 

The border for the thirtieth came from OpenClipArt.

 

 

Stupidity can explain a lot of behavior

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wikipedia says that:

 

“In philosophy, Occam’s razor is the problem-solving principle that recommends searching for explanations with the smallest possible set of elements. It is also known as the principle of parsimony or the law of parsimony.”

 

There is a mores specific principle called Hanlon’s razor that instead says:   

 

“Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity”

 

It is discussed an article by Garson O’Toole at Quote Investigator on December 30, 2016 titled Quote Origin: Never Attribute to Malice That Which Is Adequately Explained by Stupidity. He attributes it to being from 1980 by computer programmer Robert J. Hanlon. But he points to similar statements as far back as 1757 by philosopher David Hume.

 

Jono Hey has a cartoon about it at his Sketchplanations. And there is a serious discussion by Nathan Ballantyne and Peter H. Ditto at Midwest Studies in Philosophy for August 2021 in an article simply titled Hanlon’s Razor.

 

The straight razor in my cartoon was adapted from one at OpenClipArt.

 

 

Is today the first day of the rest of your life?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Doug Savage’s Savage Chickens cartoon for February 5, 2026 titled First has the following dialogue:

 

First Chicken: Today is the first day of the rest of your life!

 

Second Chicken: This second is the first second of the rest of this minute!

 

Second Chicken [continuing]: That’s how ridiculous you sound.

 

Where did that tired proverb come from? The Wikipedia article on Synanon has a section Beginnings saying their founder Charles E. ‘Chuck’ Dederich Sr. coined the phrase. But the 2012 Dictionary of Modern American Proverbs instead says on page 260 (see Google Books) that it first shows up in the January 29, 1968 Helena Montana Independent Record (but likely is older than that):

 

“The colorful fluorescent posters lining the walls of the crowded Student Union theatre bore such messages as….’Today is the first day of the rest of your life’.”

 

Another Wikipedia article attributes that proverb to The Digger Papers.

 

That proverb also is on a sign in a ‘Welcome to Hell’ Far Side cartoon by Gary Larson. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

An illustration for “This second is the first second of the rest of this minute!” is shown above based on an OpenClipArt image.

 

 

Is that a real quotation or just a paraphrase?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yesterday I was looking at a post on the Gem State Patriot News blog on December 14, 2025 by retired surgeon Dr. John Livingston which is titled The Seed We Choose to Grow.

 

His seventh paragraph states that:

 

“A recent Psychology Today article offers a more secular explanation; put plainly: ‘Self-hatred often leads to outward hate. People who loathe themselves frequently project that inner contempt onto others, seeing them through a lens of criticism and disdain. The result is a harmful feedback look, where internal struggles manifest as hostility, and hostility in turn deepens the internal turmoil. Hate becomes both the symptom and the fuel.’ “

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

But he does not provide a link to that article, or say who wrote it, or when it was published in that magazine, or what the title was. I tried Google searching for some of the sentences in his ‘quote’ and came up empty. My conclusion is that he instead just is paraphrasing from who knows where.

 

I previously wrote about John in a post on October 22, 2024 titled How not to write a blog post (or speech) using a quotation. He is so careless a writer that you never can rely on the contents of his blog posts.

 

If you only have a hammer, then everything looks like a nail

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Savage Chickens cartoon for November 18, 2025 by Doug Savage is titled The Amazing Hammer and is shown above. It illustrates a proverb Wikipedia terms the Law of the instrument. Some web sites attribute versions of it to Mark Twain:

 

Goodreads - “To a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail”

 

AZ Quotes – “If your only tool is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail.”

 

Quotefancy - “To someone with a hammer, everything looks like a nail.”

 

At Quote Investigator on May 8, 2014 Garson O’Toole discussed it in an article titled Quote Origin: If Your Only Tool Is A Hammer Then Every Problem Looks Like a Nail. He found no evidence for Mark Twain, and rather found a 1962 version by Abraham Kaplan:

 

“Give a boy a hammer and everything he meets has to be pounded.”

 

There also are a 1964 version by Abraham Maslow:

 

“Give a small boy a hammer, and he will find that everything he encounters needs pounding.”

 

and another 1966 version:

 

“I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail.”

 

Update November 23, 2025

 

Adam Savage’s 2019 memoir Every Tool’s a Hammer: Life is what you make it discusses the converse. In Chapter 12 Hammers, Blades, and Scissors, on pages 266 and 267 he writes about his friend, Mark Buck:

 

“He was a man with an aversion for fools and a love of tools. If he walked by your workbench and he saw you looking too long for something in your toolbox, he’d instruct you in an almost solemn tone, like a sifu, ‘Remember, in every tool, there is a hammer.’ What he meant was that every tool can be used for a purpose for which it wasn’t intended, including the most basic of operations, like hammering. He also meant that until you learn to see what tools can do beyond their stated purpose, you can’t quite be a maker. Truer words have rarely been spoken.”

 

 

Did Benjamin Franklin say you will find the key to success under your alarm clock? No, he did not!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Quotes often are attributed to Ben Franklin, Abraham Lincoln, Mark Twain, or Ralph Waldo Emerson. An article by Garson O’Toole at Quote Investigator on February 17, 2025 titled Quote Origin: You Will Find the Key to Success Under Your Alarm Clock? analyzed whether Benjamin Franklin said that. Franklin lived from 1706 to 1790. But the alarm clock was invented over fifty years after he died - patented over in France in 1847.

 

O’Toole found the earliest reference for that saying appeared more than a century ago in November 1922 at The Nebraska Ironmonger from Lincoln, Nebraska. And that is 132 years after Ben Franklin died! The earliest reference attributed to Franklin is from 1946 by Ezra L. Marler in a compilation titled Golden Nuggets of Thought. In 1952 it appeared in a horoscope column published in several newspapers.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There even is a fake Benjamin Franklin quotation meme generator. An example from it is shown above.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And there also is another generator for real quotes with images, one of which is shown above.

 

Images of an alarm clock and key were adapted from those found at OpenClipArt.

 

 

It is better to admit you walked through the wrong door than to spend your life in the wrong room

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I saw a LinkedIn post by Jade Bonacolta from a couple months ago which had a list of excellent aphorisms worth quoting from Colby Kultgen titled 20 Sentences in 60 Seconds That Will Change Your Life:

 

 1]  Your new self will cost your old self.

 2] Ambition without action becomes anxiety.

 3] You get 4,000 weeks if you’re lucky – stop waiting.

 4] The most dangerous addiction is the approval of other people.

 5] You teach people how to treat you by what you tolerate.

 6] Your worth isn’t tied to your productivity.

 7] ‘No’ is a complete sentence – you don’t have to justify yourself.

 8] The people who matter won’t leave you for having boundaries.

 9] ‘The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.’

10] Reach out to people just because they crossed your mind.

11] Vera Wang designed her first dress at age 40 – it’s never too late to start.

12] If it costs you your peace, it’s too expensive.

13] Discipline is choosing what you want most over what you want now.

14] Action creates motivation – not the other way around.

15] Don’t take criticism from someone you wouldn’t take advice from.

16] Fear doesn’t stop death – it stops life.

17] Notice the people who bring out your favorite version of yourself.

18] Be addicted to your passions, not your distractions.

19] If it’s out of your control, it deserves to be out of your mind.

20] It’s better to admit you walked through the wrong door than spend your life in the wrong room.

 

The twentieth also appeared as a sign on a post in the Public Speaking Group by Tony DeMeo.

 

The door was adapted from a cartoon at OpenClipArt.

 

Ignoring your audience is truly terrible advice

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Back on February 1, 2018 at X entrepreneur Naval Ravikant claimed that:

 

“The secret of public speaking is to speak as if you were alone.”

 

And he repeated that at Naval Ravikant Quotes on December 27, 2021 and Naval Ravinkant bot on May 20, 2025. Ignoring your audience obviously is terrible advice!

 

An audience image was cropped from here at Wikimedia Commons.

 

A paraphrase is not a quotation

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is an inadequately researched article by Lee-Ann Ragan at Rock Paper Scissors on February 18, 2025 titled The Science of Great Speaking: How to Engage, Persuade, and Inspire. She begins:

 

“Yes, it's true.

There IS research suggesting that people fear public speaking more than death. In a 1973 study by R. H. Bruskin Associates, which surveyed Americans about their fears, public speaking ranked as the number one fear, even above death.

 

This led to the famous quote by comedian Jerry Seinfeld:

 

‘Most people would rather be in the casket than giving the eulogy.’

 

Glossophobia (fear of public speaking) is extremely common, affecting up to 77% of people.”

 

First, what she claims Seinfeld said isn’t a real quote – it’s just a paraphrase. An article by Leigh McCullough and Kristin A. R. Osborn in the Journal of Clinical Psychology for 2004 (Volume 60, Number 8. Pages 841 to 852) titled Short Term Dynamic Psychotherapy Goes to Hollywood: The Treatment of Performance Anxiety in Cinema first got it wrong:

 

“Jerry Seinfeld once joked that at a funeral, ‘most people would rather be in the casket than giving the eulogy.’ “

 

At The Sunday Times on September 28, 2014, in an article titled Conquer the fear that dare not publicly speak its name, Paul Cleary got it right:

 

“To paraphrase Jerry Seinfeld, at a funeral most people would rather be in the casket than giving the eulogy.”

 

I most recently blogged about the actual quote on January 21, 2024 in a post titled Ten quotes to motivate speaking in public – five of which are incorrect. What Jerry really said in his TV show, on May 20, 1993 was:

 

“According to most studies, people’s number-one fear is public speaking. Number two is death. ‘Death’ is number two! Now this means to the average person, if you have to go to a funeral, you’re better off in the casket than doing the eulogy.”

 

Second, the 77% for fear is wildly overstated. On January 14, 2025 I blogged about how A claim that 77% of the world fears public speaking is just nonsense. I also blogged about it on October 12, 2020 in a post titled Do 77% of Americans fear public speaking? No! That percentage described stage fright in Swedes who also had social anxiety disorder. Only 24% of Swedes had a fear of speaking or performing.  

 

Third, the 1973 Bruskin study described (not just suggested) what more people fear, rather than what people fear more. Way back on October 27, 2009 I blogged about The 14 Worst Human Fears in the 1977 Book of Lists: where did this data really come from? Speaking before a group was feared by 40.6%, while death was feared by 18.7%. And on May 19, 2011 I blogged about another survey two decades later in a post titled America’s Number One Fear: Public Speaking – that 1993 Bruskin-Goldring Survey. That time speaking before a group was feared by 45%, while death was feared by 31%.

 

How about survey results from last year? On October 24, 2024 I blogged about how In the tenth Chapman Survey of American Fears for 2024, public speaking was only ranked #59 of 85 fears at 29.0%. And Dying was #51 at 31.6%, but People I Love Dying was #4 at 57.8%.  

 

The cartoon was adapted from one at Openclipart.

 

A single-panel comic about replacing a motivational quote for your boss’s speech

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On January 23, 2025 there was a Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal comic by Zach Weinersmith titled You can make your boss’s speech more memorable by replacing their motivational quote with Richard II’s speech to the peasants at Waltham, 1381.

 

Always proofread your PowerPoint slides before you speak. If you had asked an employee to insert a quote, then instead of one from Wayne Gretzy like:

 

"You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.” or “Procrastination is one of the most common and deadliest of diseases and its toll on success and happiness is heavy.”

 

you might find:

 

“You wretches detestable on land and sea:

You who seek equality with lords are unworthy to live.

Give this message to your colleagues: rustics you were,

and rustics you are still: you will remain in bondage,

not as before, but incomparably harsher.

 

For as long as we live we will strive to repress you,

and your misery will be an example in the eyes of posterity.”

 

The image was adapted from this one at Openclipart.

 

Who was first to tell us that “the customer is always right”?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is a Wikipedia page about the well-known slogan that:

“The customer is always right.”

 

On January 1, 2025 there was a pair of articles about that quotation. One by Jake Rossen at Mental Floss is titled Who First Said “The Customer Is Always Right”? The other by Joey Esposito at Snopes is titled The Enigmatic Origins of ‘The Customer is Always Right.’ Back on October 6, 2015 there was a third article by Garson O’Toole at Quote Investigator titled The Customer Is Always Right – referenced by the Mental Floss article. The Quote Investigator article refers to two articles from almost a hundred and twenty years ago in September 1905: one on September 3 in the Boston [Sunday] Herald, and another on September 24 in The Boston Globe. The quote is attributed to Chicago department store operator Marshall Field.

 

But I found a very different answer by searching in another database - Google Books. 75 years earlier, in 1830, a book by Carl Albert Naether and George Francis Richardson titled A Course in English for Engineers – Volume II The Engineer’s Professional and Business Writing says on page 207:

 

“Moreover, there are a good many firms whose policy that ‘the customer is always right’ prompts them to adjust a claim even though the customer is to blame, rather than to run the risk of refusing and so displeasing him.”

 

The similar phrase “the customer always is right” first appeared in The Black Diamond for 1913 on page 33. And “Is the customer right – always?” was in The Transfer for December 1915 on page 3.

 

 

 

TRY A DIFFERENT BOX OF TOOLS

 

On July 6, 2024 I blogged about The magic of reading books – stories told by librarians and booksellers. At the end I said:

 

“Back in high school I found a life-changing little book by George Polya titled How to Solve It: a system of thinking which can helpyou solve any problem. It gave me a whole new intellectual toolbox – which I used in my careers in applied research and engineering consulting.”

 

Physicist Richard Feynman came up with diagrams that are pictorial representations of the interaction and behavior of subatomic particles. And in the 1985 book Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman – Adventures of a Curious Character there is an essay starting on page 84 titled A Different Box of Tools about how he learned calculus in his high school physics class. The last five paragraphs say:

 

“One thing I never did learn was contour integration. I had learned to do integrals by various methods shown in a book that my high school physics teacher Mr. Bader had given me.

 

One day he told me to stay after class. ‘Feynman,’ he said, ‘you talk too much and you make too much noise. I know why. You’re bored. So I’m going to give you a book. You go up there in the back, in the corner, and study this book, and when you know everything that’s in this book, you can talk again.’

 

So every physics class, I paid no attention to what was going on with Pascal’s Law, or whatever they were doing. I was up in the back with this [1926] book: Advanced Calculus, by [Frederick] Woods. Bader knew I had studied Calculus for the Practical Man a little bit, so he gave me the real works – it was for a junior or senior course in college. It had Fourier series, Bessel functions, determinants, elliptic functions – all kinds of wonderful stuff that I didn’t know anything about.    

 

That book also showed how to differentiate parameters under the integral sign – it’s a certain operation. It turns out that it’s not taught very much in the universities; they don’t emphasize it. But I caught on how to use that method, and I used that one damn tool again and again. So because I was self-taught using that book, I had peculiar methods of doing integrals.

 

The result was, when guys at MIT or Princeton had trouble doing a certain integral, it was because they couldn’t do it with the standard methods they had learned in school. If it was contour integration, they would have found it; if it was a simple series expansion, they would have found it. Then I come along and try differentiating under the integral sign, and often it worked. So I got a great reputation for doing integrals, only because my box of tools was different from everybody else’s, and they had tried all their tools on it before giving the problem to me.”

 

Images of a customer and a toolbox were revised from those found at Wikimedia Commons.  

 

A new building at Boise’s Wassmuth Center for Human Rights with quotations carved in stone

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

An obituary article by Florangela Davila at The Seattle Times on August 29, 2002 discusses Bill Wassmuth: Rights activist took on Aryan Nations. Earlier this month the new Philip E. Batt building opened, as described in an article by Mia Maldanado at the Idaho Capital Sun on October 8, 2024 titled “The next era for us’: Idaho’s Wassmuth Center for Human Rights to open doors of new building. As shown above, there are four quotations in tan panels on the west side which are visible as you drive by on Ninth Street. They are:

 

“Education is a human right with immense power to transform. On its foundation rest the cornerstones of freedom, democracy, and sustainable human development.”

Kofi Annan

  

“Teaching young people early on that in diversity there is beauty and there is strength.”

Maya Angelou

 

“Love one another as I have loved you.”

Jesus  [John 13:34]

 

“I am still learning.”

Michaelangelo

 

There also is another quote:

 

“In spite of everything, I still believe that people are truly good at heart.”

Anne Frank

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The south side has another quote:

 

“What if I’m the one? What if I’m the one who could make a difference in the lives of others?

Heidi Thompson (Scentscy)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The east side has yet another quote on a bench outside the entrance, by the Anne Frank Human Rights Memorial:

 

“When love permeates our interactions, we become slow to judge and quick to forgive. We take the perspective that everyone has value, everyone can belong.”

Orville Thompson (Scentscy)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At the top of the southeast side is another quote:

 

“There is hope”

Anne Frank

 

The Maya Angelou quote is not right, a Facebook page instead says:

 

 “It is time for parents to teach young people early on that in diversity there is beauty and there is strength.”

 

I blogged about the Anne Frank memorial more than a decade ago on January 16, 2012 in a post titled Quotes for the day from a wall in Boise.

 

How not to write a blog post (or speech) using a quotation

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At the Gem State Patriot News blog for October 13, 2024 there is a post by Dr. John Livingston titled Different Bubbles, Different Realities. It is an excellent example of how NOT to either start or end a blog post or speech - and also how to thoroughly botch a quotation.

 

Dr. Livingston begin with one botched line of a quote but then doesn’t tell us who, what, when or where:

 

“EARTH GETS ITS PRICE FROM WHAT EARTH GIVES US….’ “

 

That actually comes from James Russell Lovell’s 1848 poem titled The Vision of Sir Launfal. One version of The Prelude to Part First actually says:

 

“Earth gets its price for what Earth gives us;

     The beggar is taxed for a corner to die in,
The priest hath his fee who comes and shrives us,
     We bargain for the graves we lie in;
At the Devil's booth are all things sold
Each ounce of dross costs its ounce of gold;
     For a cap and bells our lives we pay,
Bubbles we earn with a whole soul's tasking:
     'T is heaven alone that is given away,
'T is only God may be had for the asking;
There is no price set on the lavish summer,
And June may be had by the poorest comer.”

 

John said FROM rather than FOR. Then he pontificated about equity and equality.

 

And later he listed another two lines where he mixed up LIE and DIE (and omitted another line in between):

 

“A BEGGER IS TAXED FOR A CORNER TO LIE IN
WE BARGAIN FOR THE GRAVES WE DIE IN”

 

He got the following pair of lines almost correct:

 

“AT THE DEVIL’S BOOTH ARE ALL THINGS SOLD
EACH OUNCE OF DROST COSTS ITS OUNCE OF GOLD”

 

He finally got around to misquoting about bubbles, missed a line, but at least mentioned the author’s name:

 

“ ‘BUBBLES WE BUY FOR A WHOLE SOULS ASKING
TIS HEAVEN ALONE THAT CAN BE HAD FOR THE ASKING’ James Russell Lowell”

 

Worse yet he concluded:

 

“Donald Trump lives in the bubble of the American family, worker, farmer and businessman.

  Kamala lives in the bubble of the expert ruling class.

  Two very different bubbles I say.”

 

But Trump was president, putting him at the very top of our ruling class. He has nothing to do with American workers or farmers. And he is listed in Forbes 400 – The 400 Richest People in America at #319 with a worth of $4.3 billion. He pals around with Elon Musk, who is #1 with  $244 billion, and got advised to pick J. D. Vance by Peter Thiel who is #116 at 9.2 billion.

 

The bubble images came from here and here at Openclipart.

 

Did Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. really say to: “Speak clearly, if you speak at all; carve every word before you let it fall.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yes, he did. Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. (August 29, 1809 to October 7, 1894) was a physician and poet. That quote comes from an extremely long poem (over 5,900 words) titled A Rhymed Lesson (Urania) which you can read here. It was delivered before the Boston Mercantile Library Association on October 14, 1846. The entire 39th stanza (out of 62) says:

 

Once more: speak clearly, if you speak at all;
    Carve every word before you let it fall;
    Don't, like a lecturer or dramatic star,
    Try over-hard to roll the British R;
    Do put your accents in the proper spot;
    Don't, - let me beg you, - don't say "How?" for "What?"
    And when you stick on conversation's burs,
    Don't strew your pathway with those dreadful urs.

 

The length of that poem fits the definition for a megillah, a twentieth century slang term for:

 

“a long, involved story or account”

 

Megillah is the Hebrew word for scroll and originally was used to refer to the Old Testament Book of Esther that has 10 chapters, 167 verses, and 5,637 words.  It explains how the feast of Purim came to be celebrated. 

 

The 1879 portrait of Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. came from Wikimedia Commons.

 

A quote on greatness from Elbert Hubbard with one changed word

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At the LinkedIn Public Speaking Group on September 1, 2024 I saw that Tony DeMeo had featured the following quotation from Elbert Hubbard (which also is at BrainyQuote):

 

“The final proof of greatness lies in being able to endure criticism without resentment.”

 

Wikipedia says Elbert Green Hubbard was a writer who lived from June 19, 1856 to May 7, 1915. He died on the ocean liner RMS Lusitania when it was torpedoed off Ireland.

 

Where did that exact quote appear? I looked on Google and at Google Books, and found it first turned up in the June 1953 issue of Coronet magazine (Volume 34, number 2, pages 36 to 38) in a republished article by Elbert Hubbard titled Get in Line – or Get Out!. You can find that magazine at the Internet Archive. But that was 38 years after Mr. Hubbard died! In this century the quote has turned up repeatedly, without a discussion of when or where.

 

Where did the article appear during his lifetime? The original was titled Get Out or Get in Line. It was in the April 1902 issue of Cosmopolitan magazine, and it also was reprinted as a twenty-page booklet which you also can find at the Internet Archive. The paragraph containing the quote has a word changed – originally it said contumely rather than criticism, and it begins:

 

“The man who is anybody and who does anything is surely going to be criticized, vilified and misunderstood. This is a part of the penalty for greatness, and every great man understands it; and understands, too, that it is no proof of greatness. The final proof of greatness lies in being able to endure contumely without resentment….”

 

The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines contumely as:

 

“harsh language or treatment arising from haughtiness and contempt”

 

A 1900 portrait of Elbert Hubbard came from Wikimedia Commons.