Search for quote: "A man dies, is remembered for ten years..."

[victor steinbok]

This is mere speculation. The closest I can get with Mark Twain is the
line "By forever, I mean thirty years." The complete context is below.
It is a reaction to a publication of the volume "Mark Twain's Library
of Humor".

Mark Twain, Autobiography: [the specific passage written February 7, 1906]

> This book is a very interesting curiosity in one way. It reveals the surprising fact that within compass of these forty years wherein I have been playing professional humorist before the public, I have had for company seventy-eight other American humorists. Each and every one of the seventy-eight rose in my time, became conspicuous and popular, and by and by vanished. ... there is probably not a youth of fifteen years of age in this country whose eye would light with recognition at the mention of any one of the seventy-eight names.
>
> This book is a cemetery; and as I glance through it I am reminded of my visit to the cemetery in Hannibal, Missouri, four years ago, where almost every tombstone recorded a forgotten name that had been familiar and pleasant to my ear when I was a boy there fifty years before. In this mortuary volume, I find Nasby, ..., Josh Billings and a score of others, maybe two score, whose writings and saying were in everybody's mouth but are now heard of no more and are no longer mentioned. ...
>
> Why have they perished? Because they were merely humorists. Humorists of the "mere" sort cannot survive. Humor is only a fragrance, a decoration. Often it is merely an odd trick of speech and of spelling. ...  Humor must not professedly teach and it must not professedly preach, but it must do both if it would live forever. By forever, I mean thirty years.
>
> ... I am saying these vain things in this frank way because I am a dead person speaking from the grave. Even I would be to modest to say them in life. I think we never become really and genuinely our entire and honest selves until we are dead--and not then until we have been dead years and years. People ought to start dead and then they would be honest so much earlier.
======


Then, there is a matter of Gore Vidal (Dark Green, Bright Red, 1950):

> But does it matter whether one is remembered for ten years or for a thousand?


The quote in question seems to be a blend of the two.


Another sentiment on a similar subject (albeit with respect to
theatre) is at New Monthly Magazine, April 1, 1827, p. 154/1 (please
forgive the full GB citation--no access to bit.ly at the moment)

http://books.google.com/books?id=BCkAAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA154&dq=%22be+remembered+for+ten+years%22&lr=&num=30&as_brr=0&ei=-5OaS9vaCIqizQSvzo2HCw&cd=3#v=onepage&q=%22be%20remembered%20for%20ten%20years%22&f=false

But there is no close match to the specific language or anything even
remotely close to it that I could identify (I've ran rather extensive
search of variants, although the final stage of it is somewhat
incomplete).

VS-)



On Fri, Mar 12, 2010 at 12:59 PM, Cohen, Gerald Leonard <gcohen at mst.edu> wrote:
>
> This is just a double-check.  A colleague of mine is writing a book on Mark Twain and sent me the following message:
>
>  'This is something like the quote I have been unable to find:   "A man dies, is remembered for ten years and forgotten for a hundred thousand."  I have seen it ascribed to Twain, but can't verify it.'
>
> A few months ago I asked the ads-l list if anyone had any idea about the origin of this quote. Now might I ask, has anyone has ever seen this quote (or something similar) anywhere, either in Twain or elsewhere?  Is it locatable anywhere?
>
> Thus far the search has turned up nothing.  But if any group can shed light on this, it's ads-l.
>
> Gerald Cohen
>
> P.S. to Ben (re: "On Language"): Congratulations!

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