Quote by Mark Twain

I could have become a soldier if I had waited; I knew more about retreating than the man who invented retreating.

I could have become a soldier if I had waited; I knew more a

Summary

This quote suggests that the speaker has extensive knowledge and experience in escaping or withdrawing from difficult situations. The use of sarcasm emphasizes their expertise, implying that they have a better understanding of retreating than even the one who supposedly invented it. The speaker reflects on the possibility of joining the military but highlights their advanced skills in retreating, implying that becoming a soldier would have been unnecessary because of their prowess in avoiding or evading conflict.

Topics

Liked the quote? Share it with your friends.

Random Quotations

Anyone unable to understand how useful religion can be found

Anyone unable to understand how useful religion can be founded on lies will not understand this book either.

The future is better than the past. Despite the crepehangers

The future is better than the past. Despite the crepehangers, romanticists, and anti-intellectuals, the world steadily grows better because the human mind, applying itself to environment, makes it better. With hands...with tools...with horse sense and science and engineering.

Robert A. Heinlein

Science Mind Environment

Wait, wait,' he began, interrupting Oblonsky. 'Aristocratism

Wait, wait,' he began, interrupting Oblonsky. 'Aristocratism, you say. But allow me to ask, what makes up this aristocratism of Vronsky or whoever else it may be - such aristocratism that I can be scorned? You consider Vronsky an aristocrat, but I don't. A man whose father crept out of nothing by wiliness, whose mother, God knows who she didn't have liaisons with... No, excuse me, but I consider myself an aristocrat and people like myself, who can point to three or four honest generations in their families' past, who had a high degree of education (talent and intelligence are another thing), and who never lowered themselves before anyone, never depended on anyone, as my father lived, and my grandfather. And I know many like that. You find it mean that I count the trees in the forest, while you give away thirty thousand to Ryabinin; but you'll have rent coming in and I don't know what else, while I won't, and so I value what I've inherited and worked for... We're the aristocrats, and not someone who can only exist on hand-outs from the mighty of this world and can be bought for twenty kopecks. 'But who are you attacking? I agree with you,' said Stepan Arkadyich sincerely and cheerfully, though he felt Levin included him among those who could be bought for twenty kopecks.

Class Aristocracy Levin Oblonsky

The Anger Management Tour was another beautiful thing. I lov

The Anger Management Tour was another beautiful thing. I loved that tour.

The people who oppose your ideas are inevitably those who re

The people who oppose your ideas are inevitably those who represent the established order that your ideas will upset.

Anthony D'Angelo

Men may live fools, but fools they cannot die.

Men may live fools, but fools they cannot die.

Music, at its essence, is what gives us memories. And the lo

Music, at its essence, is what gives us memories. And the longer a song has existed in our lives, the more memories we have of it.

A transcendent being can be any miracle.

A transcendent being can be any miracle.

Marriage commissioners who choose not to marry homosexuals a

Marriage commissioners who choose not to marry homosexuals are being fired. A Knights of Columbus chapter in British Columbia is in court because it chooses not allow a lesbian group to use its facility for marriage ceremonies. The list goes on.

I hate vulgar realism in literature. The man who could call

I hate vulgar realism in literature. The man who could call a spade a spade should be compelled to use one. It is the only thing he is fit for.

In Sarajevo in 1992, while being shown around the starved, b

In Sarajevo in 1992, while being shown around the starved, bombarded city by the incomparable John Burns, I experienced four near misses in all, three of them in the course of one day. I certainly thought that the Bosnian cause was worth fighting for and worth defending, but I could not take myself seriously enough to imagine that my own demise would have forwarded the cause. (I also discovered that a famous jaunty Churchillism had its limits: the old war-lover wrote in one of his more youthful reminiscences that there is nothing so exhilarating as being shot at without result. In my case, the experience of a whirring, whizzing horror just missing my ear was indeed briefly exciting, but on reflection made me want above all to get to the airport. Catching the plane out with a whole skin is the best part .) Or suppose I had been hit by that mortar that burst with an awful shriek so near to me, and turned into a Catherine wheel of body-parts and (even worse) body-ingredients? Once again, I was moved above all not by the thought that my death would 'count,' but that it would not count in the least.

Christopher Hitchens

Death Martyrdom Bosnia Bosnian War Bullets Causes Churchill John Burns Mortars Near Death Experience Sarajevo Siege Of Sarajevo

A process which led from the amoeba to man appeared to philo

A process which led from the amoeba to man appeared to philosophers to be obviously progress though whether the amoeba would agree with this opinion is not known.

Bertrand Russell