Helpful Hints for Good Living

By Mark Twain

Book Overview

Irreverent, charming, eminently quotable, this handbook--an eccentric etiquette guide for the human race--contains sixty-nine aphorisms, anecdotes, whimsical suggestions, maxims, and cautionary tales from Mark Twain's private and published writings. It dispenses advice and reflections on family life and public manners; opinions on topics such as dress, health, food, and childrearing and safety; and more specialized tips, such as those for dealing with annoying salesmen and burglars. Culled from Twain's personal letters, autobiographical writings, speeches, novels, and sketches, these pieces are delightfully fresh, witty, startlingly relevant, and bursting with Twain's characteristic ebullience for life. They also remind us exactly how Mark Twain came to be the most distinctive and well-known American literary voice in the world. These texts, some of them new or out of print for decades, have been selected and meticulously prepared by the editors at the Mark Twain Project.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0520242459
• ISBN13: 9780520242456
• Release Date: October 2004
• Publisher: University of California Press
• Length: 207 Pages
• Weight: 1.02 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.3" x 8.2"

Customer Reviews

Clever humor from our past

First, it's Mark Twain - the very pseudonym a poke in the ribs - and it's full of essays on his views of life, letters to editors, milkmen and burglars. He never pokes fun at his family, much, but sees the world as a tiresome place in which to try to exist, and his fellowman as more tiresome still. It's a glimpse at a time gone by, when a note on the front door telling any future robbers that the previous pair have already taken the silverware but they're welcome to the two candlesticks in the parlor might have even made sense since the doors weren't locked.

Yes, Yes! and Yes !

If you are a blue-blooded "Twain-ist", or if you are a Pragmatist to the Nth, or even simply a light-hearted person who can laugh at the Human Race... "Mark Twain's Helpful Hints for Good Living" will not only entertain you from cover to cover but also provide ample material (albeit of debatable propriety) for the management of your daily Life. Two Thumbs Up !

A Treasure

Here are some useful living tips, advice and observations from that quintessential American literary figure Mark Twain, real name Samuel L. Clemens. This compilation contains a delightful mix of humorous writings on the mundane and sometimes very unusual occurrences that reflected his many gifts as a writer/humorist. Many of these snippets are from some of his more famous works, while others are from personal sketches and writings not as well known. The tarantulas escape, a borrowed overcoat, a lecture to a youth group, the use of foul language, a note to a burglar, and so many other little anecdotes, observations, and etc will elicit periods of laughter from the reader, as it did for me. A wonderful little treasure.

Twain at his best.

Great book with lots of his famous quotes that still apply today.

"Etiquette requires us to respect the human race"

Mark Twain in his writing very often surprises us and makes us laugh. His greatest gift is his humor. And the wisdom he provides on various aspects of daily living however sarcastic and cynical it may seem at times is grounded in a sane realistic view of humanity.