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The origin of the phrase "Lies, damned lies, and statistics" is unclear, but Mark Twain attributed it to Benjamin Disraeli [1] " Lies, damned lies, and statistics " is a phrase describing the persuasive power of statistics to bolster weak arguments, "one of the best, and best-known" critiques of applied statistics. [2]
On the Decay of the Art of Lying" is a short essay written by Mark Twain in 1880 for a meeting of the Historical and Antiquarian Club of Hartford, Connecticut. Twain published the text in The Stolen White Elephant Etc. (1882). [1] [2] In the essay, Twain laments the four ways in which men of America's Gilded Age employ man's 'most faithful ...
To the Person Sitting in Darkness. " To the Person Sitting in Darkness " is an essay by American author Mark Twain published in the North American Review in February 1901. It is a satire exposing imperialism as revealed in the Boxer Uprising and its aftermath, the Boer War, and the Philippine–American War, expressing Twain's anti-imperialist ...
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a novel by American author Mark Twain that was first published in the United Kingdom in December 1884 and in the United States in February 1885. Commonly named among the Great American Novels, the work is among the first in major American literature to be written throughout in vernacular English, characterized ...
The War Prayer. " The War Prayer ", a short story or prose poem by Mark Twain, is a scathing indictment of war, and particularly of blind patriotic and religious fervor as motivations for war. The structure of the work is simple: an unnamed country goes to war, and patriotic citizens attend a church service for soldiers who have been called up.
Samuel Langhorne Clemens (November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910), [1] known by the pen name Mark Twain, was an American writer, humorist, and essayist. He was praised as the "greatest humorist the United States has produced," [2] with William Faulkner calling him "the father of American literature." [3] Twain's novels include The Adventures of ...
Charles Dudley Warner, a writer and editor, was a neighbor and good friend of Mark Twain in Hartford, Connecticut. According to Twain's biographer, Albert Bigelow Paine, their wives challenged Twain and Warner at dinner to write a better novel than what they were used to reading. Twain wrote the first 11 chapters, followed by 12 chapters ...
James Fenimore Cooper in an 1822 portrait. Everett Emerson (in Mark Twain: A Literary Life) wrote that the essay is "possibly the author's funniest". [6] Joseph Andriano, in The Mark Twain Encyclopedia, argued that Twain "Imposed the standards of Realism on Romance" and that this incongruity is a major source of the humor in the essay.