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Mark Twain (1835 - 1910)

Mark Twain was born as Samuel L. Clemens in Florida, Missouri, in 1835, and grew up nearby the Mississippi River. His father died in 1847, leaving the family with little financial support, and Clemens became a printer's apprentice, eventually working for his brother, Orion, who had set himself up as a newspaper publisher. Through all his years in the printshop, Clemens tried his hand at composing humorous pieces. By 1856, he received a commission from the Keokuk Saturday Post for a series of comical letters reporting on his planned travels to South America. But on his way down the Mississippi, Clemens temporarily abandoned his literary ambitions to fulfill a dream he had since he was a boy. He apprenticed himself to become a riverboat pilot, and spent the next three years navigating the Mississipi River.
When the Civil War closed traffic on the river in the spring of 1861, Clemens returned to Orion again. In 1862 he was employed as a writer by the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise, signing for the first time his works "Mark Twain."
With "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County," published in 1865 by The Saturday Press of New York his style made its first appearance. In 1867 Clemens reported on a grand tour of Europe and the Mideast in Innocents Abroad (1869) which later became his first best-seller.
On his return to the United States, he married Olivia Langdon, and established with her in Harford, Connecticut, where Clemens finally turned from journalism to literature. The element of self-conscious irony would become the hallmark of Clemens' best work, especially evident in the novels set in his boyhood world beside the Mississippi River, Tom Sawyer (1876) and his masterpiece, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884).
Toward the end of his life, Clemens passed through a period of deep depression, due to his wife's and two of his daughter's death. He died at his home in Redding, Connecticut, in 1910.


el gènere humà només disposa d\'una arma realment eficaç: la rialla
fa falta el teu enemic i el teu amic junts per ferir-te el cor: el primer per calumniar-te, el segon per venir a explicar-t\'ho
la gentilesa és la llengua que el sord escolta i el cec veu
la veritat és el valor més gran que tenim. Economitzem-la
l\'ésser humà és l\'únic animal que es ruboritza. O que hauria de fer-ho
l\'única manera de mantenir-nos en forma és menjar el que no volem, beure el que no ens agrada i fer el que preferiríem no fer
no hi ha res que calgui canviar tant com els costums dels altres
quan era jove ho podia recordar tot. Hagués passat o no
quan et trobes del costat de la majoria, és el moment d\'aturar-te i rumiar
si dius la veritat, no hauràs de recordar res
un home amb una idea nova és un boig fins que la idea no triomfa