Why can’t a man put his intellect onto things that’s some value?
 Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad (1869). copy citation

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Author Mark Twain
Source The Innocents Abroad
Topic value intellect
Date 1869
Language English
Reference
Note
Weblink http://www.gutenberg.org/files/3176/3176-h/3176-h.htm

Context

“He’ll go down now and grind out about four reams of the awfullest slush about that old rock and give it to a consul, or a pilot, or a nigger, or anybody he comes across first which he can impose on. Pity but somebody’d take that poor old lunatic and dig all that poetry rubbage out of him. Why can’t a man put his intellect onto things that’s some value? Gibbons, and Hippocratus, and Sarcophagus, and all them old ancient philosophers was down on poets—” “Doctor,” I said, “you are going to invent authorities now and I’ll leave you, too. I always enjoy your conversation, notwithstanding the luxuriance of your syllables, when the philosophy you offer rests on your own responsibility;” source