Weather is a literary specialty, and no untrained hand can turn out a good article on it
Mark TwainRead
Man proposes, but God blocks the game.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Humans make plans, but ultimately it is a higher power that decides the outcomes.
This quote by Mark Twain highlights the often unpredictable nature of life. While humans can set goals and make plans, there are circumstances and forces beyond our control that can alter our paths, reminding us of the limitations of our agency and the influence of fate or divine intervention.
Themes
PlansFateControlLifeDivine
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about resilience, one might say, 'As Mark Twain once noted, 'Man proposes, but God blocks the game,' reminding us that we must adapt to lifeβs surprises.
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.
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To be good is noble; but to show others how to be good is nobler and no trouble.
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Name the greatest of all inventors. Accident.
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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
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Dawn came and matters were worse for it. Because now, emerging from the darkness, I could see, what before I had only felt, the great curtains of rain crashing down on me from towering heights and the waves that threw a path over me and trod me underfoot one after another.
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And then, one Thursday, nearly two thousand years after one man had been nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be to be nice to people for a change, a girl sitting on her own in a small cafΓ© in Rickmansworth suddenly realized what it was that had been going wrong all this time, and she finally knew how the world could be made a good and happy place. This time it was right, it would work, and no one would have to get nailed to anything.
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