A statement attributed to the American writer was widely dispersed on the Internet. We decided to check if he wrote something like that.

This phrase indicating the authorship of Mark Twain can be found on sites with collections Quote famous personalities and aphorisms. It is divided by users of social networks ("VKontakte","Classmates" Facebook*, Instagram*, Tiktok) and the platform blog ("Picabu","Zen" Livejournal, LiveInternet, "Habr"). Often a statement signed by tween Publishing And on cognitive And entertainment Portals. Modern authors specializing in motivational literature include a quote in their books - for example, “77 Truths, or a healthy way of thinking"Maxim Markov or"Life hacks of persistent people. 50 ways to be strong"John Fox.

Mark Twain was famous for his wit, so many of his quotes became common aphorisms-it is easy to believe that he could write something in the style of a dismantled phrase. Nevertheless, “verified” failed to find it in any of the works of the writer. There is also not in the digitized archive Mark Twain Projects Onlinecollected with the support of the University of California in Berkeley (USA), neither in recommended Mark House Mark Twain in Connecticut Base Twain quotes, which includes texts belonging to Peru Mark Twain or dedicated to the writer. In electronic Archive of Mark Twain, collected by the library of the University of Virginia (USA), also did not find anything like this. The phrase was not included in the big collection of quotes of the writer "Mark Twain on the fingertips»Edited Caroline Thomas Harnsberger, which had the opportunity to study the originals of Twain's works thanks to friendship with his daughter.

Project Quote investigator Indicates the earliest case of using quote in close to the disassembled wording: in May 1955, several newspapers in California published it on the same day. However, the reporters did not attribute the statement to Mark Twain. The writer himself died 45 years before, and find the earlier cases of using a quote in a similar wording indicating the authorship of Twain or without the project editors, as well as “verified”. QUOTE Investigator gives a few later cases of using this statement in various media, but until the 2000s no one pointed out the writer as its author.

The first case of an attribution of a quote by the American writer, who was “verified”, was found, - fast dated July 31, 2006, published in the Google Group service User with the Nick Gayathri Elan. There is no instructions where the quote is taken from is in the post. Probably, the author of the publication saw this phrase on the Internet, and then mixed up the author, because, as mentioned above, some quotes of Twain are very aphoristic and therefore popular even among those who have not read his works. Including for this reason Mark Twain is often attributed to sonorous phrases that he never spoke or wrote. For example, “verified” has already disassembled quotes ”It is easier to fool people than to convince them that they are fooled","If at least something depended on the elections, we would not have been allowed to participate in them" And "There is nothing easier than quitting smoking! I did it hundreds of times". Their author is often called Twain, but he had nothing to do with any of them.

The very idea that negative emotions are more harmful to the one who experiences them than the object, which they are directed to, is not at all new and is found in different formulations. So, for example, the same Quote Investigator portal He wrote The quote “Resentment is how to accept poison and wait until another person dies”, who is also often mistakenly attributed to famous personalities. There is in Turkey proverb The fact that acidic vinegar harms his bank (it means that a person with a bad character actually suffers stronger than his environment).

Thus, there is no evidence that Mark Twain has ever written or pronounced a phrase in which anger is compared with acid. In such a wording, she parted in the middle of the last century in the American media, however, without indicating authorship. It was apparently who was mistakenly attributed to Internet users only in the mid-2000s, almost a century after the death of the writer.

Photo on the cover: Ernest Herbert MillsPublic Domain, Via Wikimedia Commons

*Russian authorities They think Meta Platforms Inc., which owns social networks Facebook and Instagram, an extremist organization, its activities in Russia are prohibited.