While I haven\u2019t read nearly as much Twain as Eliot, I know The Gilded Age well, having read James, Howells, Wharton, and other novelists of that period extensively. I also researched it for a few years to write my own Gilded Age novel, Rosedale in Love: The House of Mirth Revisited<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n The quote doesn’t\u00a0 show up<\/a> anywhere as legitimately Twain’s, but it is definitely viral.<\/p>\n Then there’s this beauty:<\/p>\n Twain never said it, and it leads the list of the ten most famous bogus Twain quotes.<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Why would anyone with half a brain or an ear for the English language think this could be by Mark Twain? It has no wit, no style, no soul. It\u2019s all about mechanics and could have been written by a team putting together an instruction manual.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The Web is flooded with sites where Twain supposedly gives this banal advice, and because Twain supposedly said it, that means wow, it\u2019s important, take note!<\/p>\n Twain is often picked as the avatar of what Oscar Wilde called \u201cmore than usually revolting sentimentality,\u201d like this classic:<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Could anyone who\u2019s read Twain or even read about Twain possibly think he\u2019d say something this smarmy and illogical? And if so, how?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n It\u2019s as incongruously Twain\u2019s as this other quotation that\u2019s run amok across the Internet, spread by people eager to associate any thought at all with some distinguished American author, preferably dead:<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Yes, unbeknownst to most Twain scholars and fans, the great satirist really wanted to write greeting cards….<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The maudlin violets quote has been been sadly mis-attributed to Twain for some decades<\/a> with the help of the Dear Abby advice column. More recently, it got the imprimatur on NPR of self-improvement guru Dr. Wayne W. Dyer (W for Wikiquote?).<\/p>\n<\/div>\n You\u2019d think that someone looked up to for enlightenment by tens of millions of people might want to get his facts straight. All he\u2019d have to do was consult Google to see the quote show up as problematic right away.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n If you want to check a Twain quote yourself, it\u2019s very easy.\u00a0 One resource is Snopes, which has its own Twain page<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0 And there’s Barbara Schmidt\u2019s web site TwainQuotes.com where you get the real man, not a fake reeking of\u00a0 Victorian sentimentality or bogus can-d0 spirit.<\/p>\n Lev Raphael is the author of Rosedale in Love<\/a> and 25 other books in genres from memoir to mystery.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n <\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Internet is awash in bogus quotations and Mark Twain is a favorite “source.” Here’s one that’s all over Facebook, and the first time I read it was early in the morning, spoiling an excellent cup of coffee: \u201cSometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[228],"tags":[497,230,249,2227,738,859,1727,199,406,1725,1030,1027,1028,2226,2228,2229,380],"class_list":["post-5819","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bogus-quotations","tag-authors","tag-bogus-quotations","tag-edith-wharton","tag-gilded-age","tag-goodreads","tag-mark-twain","tag-oscar-wilde","tag-pinterest","tag-quotations","tag-quotes","tag-rosedale-in-love","tag-the-gilded-age","tag-the-house-of-mirth","tag-twain","tag-viral-quotes","tag-wayne-dyer","tag-writers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5819","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5819"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5819\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5827,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5819\/revisions\/5827"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5819"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5819"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5819"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"2014-12-10-thesecretofgettingahead.jpg\"](\"https:\/\/images.huffingtonpost.com\/2014-12-10-thesecretofgettingahead-thumb.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"2015-07-23-1437675416-6376857-forgivenessmarktwainquote.jpg\"](\"https:\/\/images.huffingtonpost.com\/2015-07-23-1437675416-6376857-forgivenessmarktwainquote-thumb.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n![\"2015-07-27-1437991767-1428287-MarkTwain.png\"](\"https:\/\/images.huffingtonpost.com\/2015-07-27-1437991767-1428287-MarkTwain-thumb.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n