Wit & Attitude Quote by Mark Twain

Twain’s line is a prank with teeth: it dresses up as profanity advice, then quietly hands you a scalpel for cutting flab. The joke is that “damn” is both stronger and more honest than “very,” and yet it’s also the sort of word a respectable editor will reflexively strike. Twain rigs a little trapdoor: you indulge the urge to intensify, the editor removes the swear, and what’s left is the sentence you should have written in the first place - one that doesn’t lean on a limp booster seat of emphasis.

The intent is not really about cursing; it’s about distrust. Twain distrusts the lazy intensifier because it signals that the writer hasn’t done the harder work of choosing a precise verb, image, or detail. “Very” is a performance of certainty without evidence, a way of insisting rather than showing. By swapping it for “damn,” Twain forces you to feel the desperation behind that insistence. If the sentence can’t survive without an adverbial crutch, it deserves to wobble.

Context matters: Twain wrote in a culture negotiating propriety, print decorum, and a rapidly professionalizing press. Editors were gatekeepers of tone, class, and “taste.” Twain weaponizes that gatekeeping as a craft hack, turning censorship into revision. Under the wisecrack is a bracing ethic: if you need to shout, you haven’t earned your point.