"Death ...a great Leveler" -- Mark Twain

April 21 -- 96 years ago, the world lost Samuel Langhorne Clemens, better known by his pen name Mark Twain.

An American humorist, novelist, writer, and lecturer, Twain may have been the most popular American celebrity of his time.

Ernest Hemingway once said: "All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn. ...all American writing comes from that. There was nothing before. There has been nothing as good since."

Part of what made Twain such a great writer was how accessible his works were, to everyday people. And he had volumes to say on lots of subjects. Here’s a link to a Web site with a collection of his quotes.

Twain had a real way of putting journalists in their place: “I am personally acquainted with hundreds of journalists, and the opinion of the majority of them would not be worth tuppence in private, but when they speak in print it is the newspaper that is talking (the pygmy scribe is not visible) and then their utterances shake the community like the thunders of prophecy.”