Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations. 1989.
| NUMBER: | 1982 |
| AUTHOR: | Mark Twain (1835–1910) |
| QUOTATION: | Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it. |
| ATTRIBUTION: | Generally, but perhaps mistakenly, attributed to Many quotation dictionaries credit Charles Dudley Warner, a friend of Twain’s, with this remark. But what Warner actually wrote, in an editorial in the Hartford (Connecticut) Courant, August 27, 1897, p. 8, was: “A well known American writer said once that, while everybody talked about the weather, nobody seemed to do anything about it.” Later, Robert U. Johnson, in his autobiography, Remembered Yesterdays, p. 322 (1923), says, “Nor have I ever seen in print Mark’s saying about the weather, ‘We all grumble about the weather, but—but—but nothing is done about it.’” The true author remains a debatable subject, and the quotation remains a popular one. |
| SUBJECTS: | Weather |