What does this quote mean?

“You and I are but sewing-machines.”

The comic comparison reduces human pride by placing ordinary people beside the much richer creative machinery Twain has just attributed to Shakespeare.

Source note: What Is Man?, Old Man speaking after comparing Shakespeare with a Gobelin loom; the machine metaphor is part of the essay’s comic-philosophical dialogue.

“ignorance gives one a large range of probabilities.”

The narrator uses irony to show how not knowing enough can make almost anything seem plausible, widening speculation rather than understanding.

Source note: Daniel Deronda; narrator’s ironic observation while Gwendolen speculates about Grandcourt, represented from Project Gutenberg #7469.

“We don’t care to eat toadstools that think they are truffles.”

The food comparison mocks pretension: the problem is not merely being ordinary, but adopting an inflated estimate of one’s own status and expecting others to accept it.

Source note: Pudd’nhead Wilson, Chapter V epigraph, introduced as a remark concerning upstarts in the Calendar sequence.

“Selfishness must always be forgiven you know, because there is no hope of a cure.”

The line is comic rather than literal advice, using exaggeration to expose how readily people excuse entrenched self-interest.

Source note: Mary Crawford makes the remark while discussing motives and conduct in company.

“There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.”

The joke exposes the appetite for attention by suggesting that even negative notice can seem preferable to complete social invisibility.

Source note: The Picture of Dorian Gray, 1890 Lippincott magazine text, Chapter 1; Lord Henry gives the reputation paradox while discussing Basil Hallward’s portrait.

“When we speak of Clive, Nelson, and Putnam as men who “didn’t know what fear was,” we ought always to add the flea—and put him at the head of the procession.”

The heroic comparison is deliberately deflated by promoting the flea above famous military figures, exposing how literalizing a cliché can make grand praise sound ridiculous.

Source note: Pudd’nhead Wilson, Calendar epigraph before the chapter section in which the flea comparison appears.