July 2, 2025

Fame is a vapor; popularity is an accident; the only earthly certainty is oblivion.

Samuel Langhorne Clemens (“Mark Twain”) (1835–1910), American writer, The Portable Curmudgeon, Jon Winokur, ed. (New York: 1987), p.97

How popular are you? Is it you or the times that make it so?

This is Twain at his most depressing. But given his own lasting appeal—he’s been dead over a century, he is still famous, and his books still widely read—he is perhaps off the mark.