Michael Shelden > Quotes

“All Congresses and Parliaments have a kindly feeling for idiots, and a compassion for them, on account of personal experience and heredity.” For”
― Michael Shelden, Mark Twain: Man in White: The Grand Adventure of His Final Years

“Thomas Macaulay’s History of England”
― Michael Shelden, Mark Twain: Man in White: The Grand Adventure of His Final Years

“Instead he created an enormous body of prose that, at its best, sings.”
― Michael Shelden, George Orwell: The Authorised Biography

“Twain’s moods changed frequently, and it is unrealistic to saddle him with one dominant emotion during his final years, when he was as likely to assume the part of the joker as that of the angry prophet.”
― Michael Shelden, Mark Twain: Man in White: The Grand Adventure of His Final Years

“Titus Andronicus:”
― Michael Shelden, Mark Twain: Man in White: The Grand Adventure of His Final Years

“Two weeks before coming to the hearing he had remarked privately, “All Congresses and Parliaments have a kindly feeling for idiots, and a compassion for them, on account of personal experience and heredity.”
― Michael Shelden, Mark Twain: Man in White: The Grand Adventure of His Final Years

“If everybody was satisfied with himself, there would be no heroes. Mark Twain1”
― Michael Shelden, Mark Twain: Man in White: The Grand Adventure of His Final Years

“At the end of an especially angry letter to Reverend Twichell on the subject of political hypocrisy, he declared, “I have written you to-day, not to do you a service, but to do myself one. There was bile in me. I had to empty it. … I have used you as an equilibrium-restorer more than once in my time, & shall continue, I guess.”31”
― Michael Shelden, Mark Twain: Man in White: The Grand Adventure of His Final Years

“History likes winners.”
― Michael Shelden, Young Titan: The Making of Winston Churchill