Weather is a literary specialty, and no untrained hand can turn out a good article on it
Mark TwainRead
There are people who think that honesty is always the best policy. This is a superstition. There are times when the appearance of it is worth six of it.
Interpretation
The quote suggests that honesty is not always the best approach and that sometimes appearances can be more beneficial.
Mark Twain's quote emphasizes the complexity of honesty in human interactions. While many people uphold honesty as an ideal value, Twain argues that there are situations where the mere appearance of honesty can be more advantageous than being truthful. This perspective challenges the simplistic notion that honesty is an unqualified virtue, highlighting the pragmatic considerations that often influence social behavior.
In practice
In a debate about ethics, you might use this quote to illustrate that truthfulness has nuances.
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.
OLD, adj. In that stage of usefulness which is not inconsistent with general inefficiency, as an "old man". Discredited by lapse of time and offensive to the popular taste, as an "old" book.
Old deeds for old people, and new deeds for new.
Dream delivers us to dream, and there is no end to illusion. Life is like a train of moods like a string of beads, and, as we pass through them, they prove to be many-colored lenses which paint the world their own hue. . . .
Without going outside, you may know the whole world, without looking through the window, you may see the ways of heaven. The farther you go, the less you know. Thus the sage knows without traveling; he sees without looking; he works without doing.
He saw merchants trading, princes hunting, mourners wailing for their dead, whores offering themselves, physicians trying to help the sick, priests determining the most suitable day for seeding, lovers loving, mothers nursing their children—and all of this was not worthy of one look from his eye, it all lied, it all stank, it all stank of lies, it all pretended to be meaningful and joyful and beautiful, and it all was just concealed putrefaction. The world tasted bitter. Life was torture
A possibility is a hint from God. One must follow it.
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