Weather is a literary specialty, and no untrained hand can turn out a good article on it
Mark TwainRead
My idea of our civilization is that it is a shoddy, poor thing and full of cruelties, vanities, arrogances, meannesses and hypocrisies.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Mark Twain critiques civilization, highlighting its moral shortcomings and superficialities.
In this quote, Mark Twain expresses his disillusionment with civilization, suggesting that beneath its surface lies a multitude of negative traits such as cruelty, vanity, arrogance, and hypocrisy. He underscores the idea that what is often regarded as 'civilized' behavior is, in reality, fraught with moral failings, challenging the notion that human progress equates to a better society.
Themes
CivilizationMoralityHypocrisyCritiqueHuman Nature
In practice
Example use cases
This quote could be used in a debate about the moral implications of societal norms.
More from Mark Twain
All quotes βThe 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.
Mark TwainRead
You can't reason with your heart; it has its own laws, and thumps about things which the intellect scorns.
Mark TwainRead
To be good is noble; but to show others how to be good is nobler and no trouble.
Mark TwainRead
Name the greatest of all inventors. Accident.
Mark TwainRead
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.
Mark TwainRead
Similar quotes
When everything that matters can be bought and sold, when commitments can be broken because they are no longer to our advantage, when shopping becomes salvation and advertising slogans become our litany, when our worth is measured by how much we earn and spend, then the market is destroying the very virtues on which in the long run it depends.
Jonathan SacksRead
I call our world Flatland, not because we call it so, but to make its nature clearer to you, my happy readers, who are privileged to live in Space.
Edwin A. AbbottRead
Objects exist and if one pays more attention to them than to people, it is precisely because they exist more than the people. Dead objects are still alive. Living people are often already dead.
Jean-Luc GodardRead
Any young man who is unmarried at the age of twenty one is a menace to the community.
Brigham YoungRead
If you tell a big enough lie and tell it frequently enough, it will be believed.
Adolf HitlerRead
All living souls welcome whatsoever they are ready to cope with; all else they ignore, or pronounce to be monstrous and wrong, or deny to be possible.
George SantayanaRead