Weather is a literary specialty, and no untrained hand can turn out a good article on it
Mark TwainRead
The Creator made Italy from designs by Michelangelo.
Interpretation
Mark Twain likens Italy's beauty to a masterpiece created by Michelangelo, emphasizing the artistic inspiration behind the country.
In this quote, Mark Twain suggests that the beauty and artistry of Italy are so profound that it seems as if they were crafted by the genius of Michelangelo himself. This comparison elevates Italy's cultural and artistic significance, reflecting its grandeur and the impact of its artistic heritage on the world.
In practice
In a speech about the importance of art and culture in education, one could say this quote by Mark Twain to illustrate Italy's artistic influence.
Weather is a literary specialty, and no untrained hand can turn out a good article on it
The easy part of being an artist is figuring out the message that everyone else is ready to hear. The hard part is waiting for the proper lull to make the announcement.
You can't reason with your heart; it has its own laws, and thumps about things which the intellect scorns.
To be good is noble; but to show others how to be good is nobler and no trouble.
Name the greatest of all inventors. Accident.
In Paris they just simply opened their eyes and stared when we spoke to them in French! We never did succeed in making those idiots understand their own language.
Poetry is prose bewitched, a music made of visual thoughts, the sound of an idea.
I would pass this music store on the way to school, and there was a clarinet in the window, a second-hand one. And I kept asking my parents to buy it, and eventually they did. I still have it now.
The moment of inspiration can come from memory, or language, or the imagination, or experience - anything that makes an impression forcibly enough for language to form.
The great tragedy is that they're removing art completely, not because they're putting more science in, but because they can't afford the art teachers or because somebody thinks it's not useful. An enlightened society has all of this going on within it. It's part of what distinguishes what it is to be human from other life forms on Earth - that we have culture.
As a kid, I used to dream about airplanes before I ever flew in one. I really knew, when I started photographing, I wanted it to be a way of knowing different cultures, not just in other countries but in this country, too, and I knew I wanted to enter other lives. I knew I wanted to be a voyeur.
There are lots of similarities between being a writer and a lawyer: to tell a story to a jury, hold their attention, make them laugh, make them like you. But what makes being a barrister less satisfying than being a writer is, finally, that it's about what someone else wants you to say.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.