“Worrying is like paying a debt you don't owe.”

—  Mark Twain

Last update Sept. 27, 2023. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Worrying is like paying a debt you don't owe." by Mark Twain?
Mark Twain photo
Mark Twain 637
American author and humorist 1835–1910

Related quotes

Lois McMaster Bujold photo

“You don't pay back your parents. You can't. The debt you owe them gets collected by your children, who hand it down in turn.”

Vorkosigan Saga, A Civil Campaign (1999)
Context: You don't pay back your parents. You can't. The debt you owe them gets collected by your children, who hand it down in turn. It's a sort of entailment. Or if you don't have children of the body, it's left as a debt to your common humanity. Or to your God, if you possess or are possessed by one.

Donald J. Trump photo
Terence V. Powderly photo

“If you owe a man a dollar, pay it; if you owe him a grudge, forget it, and always be kind.”

Terence V. Powderly (1849–1924) American mayor

[Powderly, Terence, 'The Path I Trod: The Autobiography of Terence V. Powderly, 1940, Columbia University Press, 9781163178164, https://archive.org/stream/pathitrodautobio00powdrich, 34]

William Graham Sumner photo

“The man who started with the notion that the world owed him a living would once more find, as he does now, that the world pays him its debt in the state prison.”

William Graham Sumner (1840–1910) American academic

“The Challenge of Facts”, 1914 http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1914sumner.html.

Hammurabi photo

“If any one owe a debt for a loan, and a storm prostrates the grain, or the harvest fail, or the grain does not grow for lack of water; in that year he need not give his creditor any grain, he washes his debt-tablet in water and pays no rent for this year.”

Hammurabi (-1810–-1750 BC) sixth king of Babylon

Section 48 of the Code of Hammurabi (translated by Leonard William King, 1910).
Alternately translated as: If a man owe a debt and Adad inundate his field and carry away the produce, or, though lack of water, grain have not grown in the field, in that year he shall not make any return of grain to the creditor, he shall alter his contract-tablet and he shall not pay the interest for that year.

Joss Whedon photo

“Love is for children. I owe him a debt.”

Joss Whedon (1964) American director, writer, and producer for television and film
Pete Stark photo

“The more debt we owe, the wealthier we are.”

Pete Stark (1931–2020) American politician

From the interview which he gave to Jan Helfeld . http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjbPZAMked0&feature=player_embedded

Robert Downey Jr. photo

“Worrying is like praying for something you don't want.”

Robert Downey Jr. (1965) American actor

Source: Biography

George Herbert photo

“991. Speake not of my debts, unlesse you mean to pay them.”

George Herbert (1593–1633) Welsh-born English poet, orator and Anglican priest

Jacula Prudentum (1651)

“It is most likely that the author was the only one who owed and paid a debt of tears. I know something about this but not all the details.”

Note in the first chapter of an 1814 version of The Story of the Stone, as quoted by Liu Zaifu in Reflections on "Dream of the Red Chamber", trans. Shu Yunzhong (Cambria Press, 2008), p. 197

Related topics