Weather is a literary specialty, and no untrained hand can turn out a good article on it
Mark TwainRead
A dream...I was trying to explain to St. Peter, and was doing it in the German tongue, because I didn't want to be too explicit.
Interpretation
This quote reflects on the complexity of communication and the nuances involved in expressing one's thoughts, especially about significant themes like dreams and the afterlife.
In this quote, Mark Twain humorously contemplates the difficulties of explaining one's dreams to St. Peter, using the German language to avoid full disclosure. It illustrates the challenges of conveying profound thoughts and experiences, highlighting that even in dreams, clarity can be elusive and that we often grapple with how to articulate our inner lives to others.
In practice
Using this quote during a discussion about the significance of dreams in literature.
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.
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
No one knows what cuases an outer landscape to become an inner one.
How can non-existence get sick of itself? Everytime you wake up, you appear again out of nowhere. And so does everything else. Death just means the replacement of the usual morning waking with something else, something quite impossible even to think about. We don't even have the instrument to do it, because our mind & our world are the same thing.
People are only mean when they're threatened… and that's what our culture does. That's what our economy does. Even people who have jobs in our economy are threatened, because they worry about losing them. And when you get threatened, you start looking out only for yourself. You start making money a god. It is all part of this culture.
I'll be a story in your head. But that's OK. We're all stories, in the end. Just make it a good one, eh? Because it was, you know; it was the best.
To the extent I am known, I think I am known as a person who expresses his opinion freely about things - and I was sensitive to the possibility that if I was seen taking money for saying nice things about a product, my comments and choices and opinions would become, understandably, suspect.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.