I just started reading Joan of Arc written by Mark Twain, which is available as a free ebook, when a passage really struck me to the core:
"When we reflect that her century was the brutalest, the wickedest, the
rottenest in history since the darkest ages, we are lost in wonder at the
miracle of such a product from such a soil. The contrast between her and
her century is the contrast between day and night. She was truthful when
lying was the common speech of men; she was honest when honesty was become
a lost virtue; she was a keeper of promises when the keeping of a promise
was expected of no one; she gave her great mind to great thoughts and
great purposes when other great minds wasted themselves upon pretty
fancies or upon poor ambitions; she was modest, and fine, and delicate
when to be loud and coarse might be said to be universal; she was full of
pity when a merciless cruelty was the rule; she was steadfast when
stability was unknown, and honorable in an age which had forgotten what
honor was; she was a rock of convictions in a time when men believed in
nothing and scoffed at all things; she was unfailingly true to an age that
was false to the core; she maintained her personal dignity unimpaired in
an age of fawnings and servilities; she was of a dauntless courage when
hope and courage had perished in the hearts of her nation; she was
spotlessly pure in mind and body when society in the highest places was
foul in both—she was all these things in an age when crime was the
common business of lords and princes, and when the highest personages in
Christendom were able to astonish even that infamous era and make it stand
aghast at the spectacle of their atrocious lives black with unimaginable
treacheries, butcheries, and beastialities." ~ Joan of Arc, Mark Twain
Shouldn't we all aspire to this?
I wonder how many people even know about this book. I was surprised when I first came upon it, and still it's taken me years to finally get started. Mark Twain isn't just one of my most favorite American authors, he's one of my favorite authors of all time. This work was a labor of love for him, and was his favorite book of all those he's written. I read somewhere that it took him 12 years of study, even going to France, and two years in writing. “I have never done any work before that cost so much thinking and
weighing and measuring and planning and cramming … on this last third I
have constantly used five French sources and five English ones, and I
think no telling historical nugget in any of them has escaped me."
I think it says a lot about Twain to know, out of all the amazing historical examples we've been blessed with, that he loved Joan of Arc most of all.
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