Weather is a literary specialty, and no untrained hand can turn out a good article on it
I have been on the verge of being an angel all my life, but it's never happened yet.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote reflects a conflict between aspiration and reality, highlighting an unfulfilled potential for goodness.
Mark Twain's quote illustrates the tension between one's aspirations and the realities of life. It suggests that while one may strive for a virtuous or saintly existence, the complexities of life often prevent the full realization of that ideal. The idea of being 'on the verge of being an angel' conveys a sense of longing for purity and goodness, yet a recognition that such a state remains unattainable, which resonates with the human experience of imperfection and the struggle against one's limitations.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
During a motivational speech about self-improvement and striving for excellence.
More from Mark Twain
All quotes βThe 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
The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness.
Power tends to confuse itself with virtue, and a great nation is peculiarly susceptible to the idea that its power is a sign of God's favor.
That [American exceptionalism] is a reaction to the inability of people to understand global complexity or important issues like American energy dependency. Therefore, they search for simplistic sources of comfort and clarity. And the people that they are now selecting to be, so to speak, the spokespersons of their anxieties are, in most cases, stunningly ignorant.
Withdraw allegiance from the old categories of the Negative (law, limit, castration, lack, lacuna), which the Western thought has so long held sacred as a form of power and an access to reality. Prefer what is positive and multiple, difference over uniformity, flows over unities, mobile arrangements over systems. Believe that what is productive is not sedentary but nomadic.
We are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right.
It's not life or death, the labyrinth. Suffering. Doing wrong and having wrong things happen to you. That's the problem. Bolivar was talking about the pain, not about the living or dying. How do you get out of the labyrinth of suffering?