Weather is a literary specialty, and no untrained hand can turn out a good article on it
Mark TwainRead
There is a great difference between feeding parties to wild beasts and stirring up their finer feelings in an inquisition. One is the system of degraded barbarians, the other of enlightened civilized people.
Interpretation
The quote contrasts barbaric treatment of others with the enlightened appeal to their better qualities.
Mark Twain's quote highlights the significant moral difference between brutal acts of violence and oppression compared to a more civilized approach that seeks to engage the nobler aspects of human nature. He critiques the barbarism of treating others inhumanely, suggesting that true civilization lies in fostering compassion and understanding rather than resorting to cruelty.
In practice
In a speech about social justice, one might refer to this quote to emphasize the importance of humane treatment.
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.
Indeed, as any one who has ever worked among the poor knows only too well, the brotherhood of man is no mere poet's dream, it is a most depressing and humiliating reality.
The more completely we give of ourselves, the more completely the world gives back to us.
Glorious indeed is the world of God around us, but more glorious the world of God within us.
A benevolent malefactor, merciful, gentle, helpful, clement, a convict, returning good for evil, giving back pardon for hatred, preferring pity to vengeance, preferring to ruin himself rather than to ruin his enemy, saving him who had smitten him, kneeling on the heights of virtue, more nearly akin to an angel than to a man. Javert was constrained to admit to himself that this monster existed. Things could not go on in this manner.
If you suffocate my blackness, you've got to realize that's supremacy.
Every day I try to be in communication with the universe in an unconscious way.
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