Source identified
Read & copy the quotation
“All say, “How hard it is that we have to die”—a strange complaint to come from the mouths of people who have had to live.”
- Date
- 1894
- Local voice
- Epigraph / fictional source voice · Pudd’nhead Wilson’s Calendar
Meaning of “All say, “How hard it is that we…”
The dark joke reverses the usual complaint about mortality by suggesting that having lived through life already gives people experience of difficulty, making death an oddly chosen final grievance.
Where does it come from?
Pudd’nhead Wilson, Chapter X epigraph; the mortality line is immediately followed by the anger maxim.
Why the local voice matters
Twain presents this wording as a chapter-epigraph Calendar maxim. The Calendar is a fictional framing device / source voice rather than uncomplicated autobiography by Twain.
