# Quote — Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi

> No, the romance and beauty were all gone from the river. All the value any feature of it had for me now was the amount of usefulness it could furnish toward compassing the safe piloting of a steamboat. Since those days, I have pitied doctors from my heart. What does the lovely flush in a beauty's cheek mean to a doctor but a "break" that ripples above some deadly disease? Are not all her visible charms sown thick with what are to him the signs and symbols of hidden decay? Does he ever see her beauty at all, or doesn't he simply view her professionally, and comment upon her unwholesome condition all to himself? And doesn't he sometimes wonder whether he has gained most or lost most by learning his trade?

- Author: [Mark Twain](https://www.leafyquotes.com/mark-twain.md)
- Book: [Life on the Mississippi](https://www.leafyquotes.com/mark-twain/life-on-the-mississippi.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Life_on_the_Mississippi#Quotes) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/mark-twain/life-on-the-mississippi/no-the-romance

## More from this book

> I found the half-forgotten Southern intonations and elisions as pleasing to my ear as they had formerly been. A Southerner talks music. At least it is music to me, but then I was born in the South. The educated Southerner has no use for an r, except at the beginning of a word.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/mark-twain/life-on-the-mississippi/i-found-the.md)

> Sir Walter [Scott] had so large a hand in making Southern character, as it existed before the war, that he is in great measure responsible for the war.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/mark-twain/life-on-the-mississippi/sir-walter-scott.md)

> One of the pilots whom I had known when I was on the river had died a very honorable death. His boat caught fire, and he remained at the wheel until he got her safe to land. Then he went out over the breast-board with his clothing in flames, and was the last person to get ashore. He died from his injuries in the course of two or three hours, and his was the only life lost. The history of Mississippi piloting affords six or seven instances of this sort of martyrdom, and half a hundred instances of escapes from a like fate which came within a second or two of being fatally too late; But there is no instance of a pilot deserting his post to save his life while by remaining and sacrificing it he might secure other lives from destruction. It is well worth while to set down this noble fact, and well worth while to put it in italics, too.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/mark-twain/life-on-the-mississippi/one-of-the.md)