Weather is a literary specialty, and no untrained hand can turn out a good article on it
Nothing incites to money-crimes like great poverty or great wealth.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Extreme wealth and poverty can drive individuals to commit crimes related to money.
This quote by Mark Twain highlights the paradoxical relationship between wealth and crime, suggesting that both extreme poverty and extreme wealth can lead people to act immorally or commit crimes in pursuit of money. It speaks to the human condition and the moral dilemmas people face when they find themselves at either end of the economic spectrum, implying that societal pressures and inequalities can corrupt one's integrity and lead to illicit behavior.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about socioeconomic inequality, this quote can illustrate the correlation between wealth disparities and crime.
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.
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.
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I feel like someone after a deluge being asked to describe the way it was before the flood while I'm still plucking seaweed out of my hair.
I was a wife and mother, blameless in moral life, with a deep sense of duty and a proud self-respect; it was while I was this that doubt struck me, and while I was in the guarded circle of the home, with no dream of outside work or outside liberty, that I lost all faith in Christianity.
What else can I do? Once you've gone this far you aren't fit for anything else. Something happens to your mind. You're overqualified, overspecialized, and everybody knows it. Nobody in any other game would be crazy enough to hire me. I wouldn't even make a good ditch-digger, I'd start tearing apart the sewer-system, trying to pick-axe and unearth all those chthonic symbols - pipes, valves, cloacal conduits... No, no. I'll have to be a slave in the paper-mines for all time.
I was reminded of the Four Immutable Laws of the Spirit: Whoever is present are the right people. Whenever it begins is the right time. Whatever happens is the only thing that could have happened. And when it's over, it's over.
Tradition is the illusion of permanance.