Source identified
Read & copy the quotation
“When angry, count four; when very angry, swear.”
- Date
- 1894
- Local voice
- Epigraph / fictional source voice · Pudd’nhead Wilson’s Calendar
Meaning of “When angry, count four; when very angry, swear.”
The line begins like conventional restraint advice and then breaks its own moral posture, using escalation to turn a familiar self-control formula into a comic admission about anger.
Where does it come from?
Pudd’nhead Wilson, Chapter X epigraph; a Calendar maxim placed directly after the mortality joke.
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.
