Did Mark Twain say, “There should be moderation in everything, including moderation”?

There is a popular quote on the Internet that excessive zeal should be avoided even in moderation. These words are attributed to the famous American writer. We decided to check if he said anything like that.

Parsed phrase with attribution to Mark Twain meets on websites With quotes famous personalities and aphorisms. She is often include V collections statements of the writer on the Internet and even in print collections. Social media users share the quote (X, Facebook*, "VKontakte") And blogging platforms.

Mark Twain's works have been well researched and digitized. The largest portals where you can get acquainted with the texts of the American writer are the archive Mark Twain Projects Online, compiled with support from the University of California, Berkeley, base Twain Quotes, which includes texts written by the writer or dedicated to him, and an electronic archive Mark Twain, collected by the University of Virginia Library. In the collections of these “Verified” projects, it was not possible to find either the exact quote or its individual parts translated into English, the author’s native language. The phrase was not included in the large collection of quotes from the writer “Mark Twain at your fingertipsedited by Caroline Thomas Harnsberger, a close friend of Twain's daughter, who had the opportunity to personally study his manuscripts.

However, in one of Twain’s notebooks something similar in meaning actually appears statement, although in a completely different formulation: “Moderate abstinence is best. Excessive abstinence harms the cause of abstinence, and moderate abstinence helps it in the fight against immoderate intemperance. Fanatics will never know this, although it is written in letters of gold in the sky.” In 1881, The Washington Post published another one of his saying on this score, also very different from what is being discussed: “Complete abstinence is so excellent that it cannot be taken to the extreme. In my passion for this I go so far as to abstain completely from the most complete abstinence.” It is noteworthy that none of these formulations are practically found in the Russian-language segment of the Internet. 

The verifiable phrase about moderation in moderation is also popular among English-speaking Internet users - although there it is mainly attributed to Irish to the writer Oscar Wilde and the American diplomat Horace Porter. Portal The Quote Investigator, who specializes in studying the origins of popular quotes, found dozens of cases where the statement about moderation was used in books and media in formulations very similar to the one being tested. In some publications, authorship was not indicated at all, in others it was attributed to a wide range of people: from the ancient Roman thinker, author of the novel “Satyricon” Gaius Petronius Arbiter to the American statesman Benjamin Franklin.

The earliest instance of the use of this quote in Russian (and immediately with attribution to Twain) that Verified was able to find is - fast on the social network Twitter (now X) by user @gayavat on October 27, 2016. That tweet received neither reposts nor likes, but a few days later a phrase indicating the authorship of the American writer published on a website with collections of quotes from famous people, and from there it probably spread throughout the Russian-speaking segment of the Internet. 

Thus, there is no evidence that Mark Twain ever wrote about moderation in the form analyzed. In the English-speaking segment of the Internet, as well as in the media, the quote is widespread and has been known for several decades, but it is almost never attributed to the American writer. It appeared in the Russian-language segment only in 2016 - and immediately with attribution to Twain, obviously erroneous. The language of this writer is figurative and aphoristic, so it is not surprising that he is quoted so often. However, it is precisely because of this that other people’s statements are often attributed to him, like, for example, Albert Einstein. They do this either by mistake (because they think Twain might have said something similar) or to give their own thoughts more weight.

*Russian authorities think the company Meta Platforms Inc., which owns the social network Facebook, is an extremist organization; its activities in Russia are prohibited.

Cover photo: marktwainhouse.blogspot.com, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Incorrect quote attribution

What do our verdicts mean?

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