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Solomon, who was one of the Deity's favorites, had a copulation cabinet composed of seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines. To save his life he could not have kept two of these young creatures satisfactorily refreshed, even if he had fifteen experts to help him. Necessarily almost the entire thousand had to go hungry for years and years on a stretch. Conceive of a man hardhearted enough to look daily upon all that suffering and not be moved to mitigate it.
Mark Twain
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Interpretation

What this quote means

This quote reflects on the moral implications of power and the responsibilities that come with it.

Mark Twain's quote critiques the excesses of King Solomon, highlighting how his immense harem leads to suffering among those who cannot be adequately cared for. It raises questions about morality, empathy, and the responsibilities of those in power, suggesting that true leadership involves understanding and mitigating the suffering of others.

Themes

PowerResponsibilitySufferingMoralityLeadersEmpathy

In practice

Example use cases

In a discussion on leadership ethics, you might use this quote to emphasize the importance of empathy.

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