Weather is a literary specialty, and no untrained hand can turn out a good article on it
Mark TwainRead
Strange a God who mouths Golden Rules and forgiveness, then invented hell; who mouths morals to other people and has none Himself; who frowns upon crimes yet commits them all; who created man without invitation, then tries to shuffle the responsibility for man's acts upon man, instead of honorably placing it where it belongs, upon Himself; and finally with altogether divine obtuseness, invites this poor, abused slave to worship Him!
Interpretation
This quote critiques the contradictions in the concept of God and the moral expectations placed on humanity.
Mark Twain's quote expresses skepticism about the nature of God and the moral contradictions presented in religious teachings. He highlights the irony of a deity that promotes forgiveness and moral behavior while simultaneously allowing for the existence of hell and human suffering, questioning the fairness of divine expectations placed upon humanity when God Himself seems to display a lack of accountability and understanding.
In practice
This quote can be used in a debate about the nature of divinity in a philosophy class.
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.
There is no absolute knowledge. And those who claim it, whether they are scientists or dogmatists, open the door to tragedy.
I am a creationist and an evolutionist. Evolution is God's, or Nature's method of creation. Creation is not an event that happened in 4004 BC; it is a process that began some 10 billion years ago and is still under way.
The self is like a pimping blackmailing chauffeur who gets you from here to there on word lines.
How poor this world would be without its graves, without the memories of its mighty dead. Only the voiceless speak forever.
The best pleasures of this world are not quite true.
It would be a bitter cosmic joke if we destroy ourselves due to atrophy of the imagination.
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