An author who writes on poker and other games has an article in which he gives a quote he attributes to Mark Twain:
To me, this sounds like something Twain, but I can’t find a reference on various quotation sites.
I have mailed Ciaffone, and he can’t remeber his reference.
Did Twain write this, or someone else?
It sounds like something Amarillo Slim might have said. Or maybe Doyle Brunson.
I’ve read quite a bit of Twain and that doesn’t sound like him. Given that college education was not as common in his time as it is now, that doesn’t seem to be an appropriate comparison to make. After all, how many in his intended audience know how much it cost to go to college, unlike today.
It seems to me that the term “the cost of a college education” is fairly recent. No one in Twain’s time would have used it. It requires a society that thinks that a college education is required for any sort of decent job, and yet there would have to be a certain amount of cynicism about college education. I’ll bet that expression is post-1950 at least, and it’s probably post-1975.
Not helpful to the OP, but the only thing that comes to mind when pairing Twain & Poker, is the phrase “the calm confidence of a Christian with four aces”.