Weather is a literary specialty, and no untrained hand can turn out a good article on it
There is not an acre of ground on the globe that is in possession of its rightful owner, or that has not been taken away from owner after owner, cycle afer cycle, by force and bloodshed.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote illustrates the perpetual struggle for land ownership throughout history, emphasizing the violent nature of acquiring territory.
Mark Twain's quote reflects on the history of land ownership, pointing out that throughout time, no piece of land remains with its original owner, as ownership has been continuously challenged and taken through conflict and violence. It serves as a commentary on human nature and the cyclical patterns of conquest and dispossession that characterize civilization's history, prompting reflection on the ethics of ownership and the consequences of violence in human affairs.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about historical land disputes during a lecture on colonialism.
More from Mark Twain
All quotes →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.
Similar quotes
Christianity is not some ideal toward which we ought always to strive even though the ideal is out of reach. Christianity is not a series of slogans that sum up our beliefs.
Each of us is incomplete compared to someone else - an animal's incomplete compared to a person... and a person compared to God, who is complete only to be imaginary.
Each of us must turn inward and destroy in himself all that he thinks he ought to destroy in others.
Our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet.
If you need to visualize the soul, think of it as a cross between a wolf howl, a photon and a dribble of dark molasses. But what it really is, as near as I can tell, is a packet of information. It's a program, a piece of hyperspatial software designed explicitly to interface with the Mystery. Not a mystery, mind you - the Mystery. The one that can never be solved.
At the beginning of human history, as we struggled to light fires and to chisel fallen trees into rudimentary canoes, who could have predicted that long after we had managed to send men to the moon and areoplanes to Australasia, we would still have such trouble knowing how to tolerate ourselves, forgive our loved ones, and apologise for our tantrums?