Quote #139
If you would have your fiction live forever, you must neither overtly preach nor overtly teach; but you must covertly preach and covertly teach.
More from Samuel Langhorne Clemens
- Never let your schooling interfere with your education.
- I can teach anybody how to get what they want out of life. The problem is I can't find anybody who can tell me what they want.
- I am opposed to millionaires, but it would be dangerous to offer me the position.
- Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please.
- The test of any good fiction is that you should care something for the characters; the good to succeed, the bad to fail. The trouble with m…
- In religion and politics, people's beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination.
- I don't give a damn for a man that can only spell a word one way.
- It does look as if Massachusetts were in a fair way to embarrass me with kindnesses this year. In the first place, a Massachusetts judge ha…