"Definition of a classic — something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read."
— Mark Twain

January 1, 1970

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Original Language: English
Available Translations (1)
German: "Ein Klassiker ist etwas, das jeder gelesen haben möchte, aber keiner lesen möchte."

Sources

Quoting or paraphrasing a Professor Winchester in "Disappearance of Literature", speech at the Nineteenth Century Club, New York, 20 November 1900, in Mark Twain's Speeches (1910), ed. William Dean Howells, p. 194