Linux Literature

The difference between a Miracle and a Fact is exactly the difference
between a mermaid and a seal.
                -- Mark Twain

The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the
difference between lightning and the lightning bug.
                -- Mark Twain

The fashion wears out more apparel than the man.
                -- William Shakespeare, "Much Ado About Nothing"

The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers.
                -- Wm. Shakespeare, "Henry VI", Part IV

The holy passion of Friendship is of so sweet and steady and loyal and
enduring a nature that it will last through a whole lifetime, if not asked to
lend money.
                -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"

The human race has one really effective weapon, and that is laughter.
                -- Mark Twain

The human race is a race of cowards; and I am not only marching in that
procession but carrying a banner.
                -- Mark Twain

The last thing one knows in constructing a work is what to put first.
                -- Blaise Pascal

The Least Perceptive Literary Critic
        The most important critic in our field of study is Lord Halifax.  A
most individual judge of poetry, he once invited Alexander Pope round to
give a public reading of his latest poem.
        Pope, the leading poet of his day, was greatly surprised when Lord
Halifax stopped him four or five times and said, "I beg your pardon, Mr.
Pope, but there is something in that passage that does not quite please me."
        Pope was rendered speechless, as this fine critic suggested sizeable
and unwise emendations to his latest masterpiece.  "Be so good as to mark
the place and consider at your leisure.  I'm sure you can give it a better
turn."
        After the reading, a good friend of Lord Halifax, a certain Dr.
Garth, took the stunned Pope to one side.  "There is no need to touch the
lines," he said.  "All you need do is leave them just as they are, call on
Lord Halifax two or three months hence, thank him for his kind observation
on those passages, and then read them to him as altered.  I have known him
much longer than you have, and will be answerable for the event."
        Pope took his advice, called on Lord Halifax and read the poem
exactly as it was before.  His unique critical faculties had lost none of
their edge.  "Ay", he commented, "now they are perfectly right.  Nothing can
be better."
                -- Stephen Pile, "The Book of Heroic Failures"

The Least Successful Collector
        Betsy Baker played a central role in the history of collecting.  She
was employed as a servant in the house of John Warburton (1682-1759) who had
amassed a fine collection of 58 first edition plays, including most of the
works of Shakespeare.
        One day Warburton returned home to find 55 of them charred beyond
legibility.  Betsy had either burned them or used them as pie bottoms.  The
remaining three folios are now in the British Museum.
        The only comparable literary figure was the maid who in 1835 burned
the manuscript of the first volume of Thomas Carlyle's "The Hisory of the
French Revolution", thinking it was wastepaper.
                -- Stephen Pile, "The Book of Heroic Failures"