On 23 Apr 2014, at 14:42, Jesse Mazer wrote:
On Wed, Apr 23, 2014 at 7:08 AM, LizR <lizj...@gmail.com> wrote:
On 23 April 2014 22:29, Telmo Menezes <te...@telmomenezes.com> wrote:
Hi Liz,
The "billions" make sense to me, to be honest. Even before the
earth, we still didn't exist. It sounds like poetic liberty for "a
mind blowing amount of time".
Sure, but I think at the time "millions of years" was a mind-blowing
amount of time - actually it still is - and it would appear the
comment doesn't have any known source. So although I'd be happily
proved wrong on this, it just feels a bit anachronistic for Samuel
Clemens. Maybe just my personal bias.
The people at the snopes board did some looking around for the quote
at http://message.snopes.com/showthread.php?t=81874 and couldn't
find any appearances before 2002, so it's probably not a real quote.
However, they did turn up the following quote from Twain's
autobiography which the fake quote was probably a paraphrase of:
"Annihilation has no terrors for me, because I have already tried it
before I was born--a hundred million years--and I have suffered more
in an hour, in this life, than I remember to have suffered in the
whole hundred million years put together."
see http://harpers.org/blog/2008/03/no-terrors-for-me/ for
confirmation.
Thanks, and Mark Twain indeed seems to remember the bright side,
(which was unclear out of context) and obviously:
the end:
"It is understandable that when I speak from
the grave it is not a spirit that is speaking; it
is a nothing; it is an emptiness; it is a vacancy;
it is a something that has neither feeling nor
consciousness. It does not know what it is saying.
It is not aware that it is saying anything at
all, therefore it can speak frankly and freely, since
it cannot know that it is inflicting pain, discomfort,
or offense of any kind."
-Mark Twain,
Is very funny.
==================================
"Annihilation has no terrors for me, because
I have already tried it before I was born-a
hundred million years-and I have suffered
more in an hour, in this life, than I remember
to have suffered in the whole hundred million
years put together. There was a peace, a serenity,
an absence of all sense of responsibility, an
absence of worry, an absence of care, grief, perplexity;
and the presence of a deep content and
unbroken satisfaction in that hundred million
years of holiday which I look back upon with a
tender longing and with a grateful desire to resume,
when the opportunity comes.
It is understandable that when I speak from
the grave it is not a spirit that is speaking; it
is a nothing; it is an emptiness; it is a vacancy;
it is a something that has neither feeling nor
consciousness. It does not know what it is saying.
It is not aware that it is saying anything at
all, therefore it can speak frankly and freely, since
it cannot know that it is inflicting pain, discomfort,
or offense of any kind" -Mark Twain
Bruno
Jesse
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