Everybody Talks About the Weather, But Nobody Does Anything About It
Not Mark Twain — most likely Charles Dudley WarnerCharles Dudley Warner1829–1900 · American essayist, novelist & co-editor of the Hartford Courant
?Attribution status: Disputed — the wording was never fixed, and no single printing can be called the original.✓Reuse status: Free to reuse
Quote Investigator concludes that “the preponderance of the evidence indicates that Charles Dudley Warner crafted the weather maxim,” with versions credited to him in print from 1884 onward and the Twain credit appearing only from 1905. Twain’s own name is attached to no primary text: Respectfully Quoted records that the saying “has never been verified in his writings.”
“Everybody Talks About the Weather, But Nobody Does Anything About It” attributed to Charles Dudley Warner (1829–1900), not Mark Twain. Versions credited to Warner appear in print from 1884; the Hartford Courant credited him unequivocally in 1912. Via Quotle.info.
⚠ The slide-ready mistake: crediting this to Mark Twain. Use the credit shown above instead.
Can you use it?
✓ Free to use, including in commercial and paid presentations — no permission or licence needed.
Image direction — grounded in this quote’s real context; paste into your image tool
In context
Evoking the world of Charles Dudley Warner — American essayist, novelist & Hartford Courant editor. Theme: "Everybody Talks About the Weather, But Nobody Does Anything About It". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.
Minimalist
Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "Everybody Talks About the Weather, But Nobody Does Anything About It". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.
Provenance
What the record actually shows
Real author
Charles Dudley Warner (1829–1900)
Earliest documented version
Proceedings of the Chamber of Commerce of the State of New York, 18 November 1884, p. 58
Hartford Courant
Unsigned editorial, August 1897, p. 8 — credits “a well known American writer”
Credited to Twain from
1905 in print; never found in his own writings
A well known American writer said once that, while everybody talked about the weather, nobody seemed to do anything about it.
Hartford Courant editorial, August 1897
The 1897 Hartford Courant editorial — the citation that launched a century of confusion. It was unsigned, Warner was writing the paper’s editorials at the time, and it credits the line to a writer it declines to name. Fifteen years later the same paper named him.
1884 — the earliest version located by Quote Investigator ↗, in the New York Chamber of Commerce proceedings: a speaker recalls “the observation of my old friend and partner, DUDLEY WARNER, concerning New-England weather — it is a matter about which a great deal is said, but very little done.”
August 1897 — an unsigned Hartford Courant editorial prints the familiar shape but credits an unnamed “well known American writer.” Respectfully Quoted ↗ holds that Warner wrote it. (The date is recorded as 24 August by Quote Investigator’s citation and as 27 August by Respectfully Quoted.)
1904 — William Dean Howells’s Harper’s “Editor’s Easy Chair” tribute, reprinted at page 206 of Annie Fields’s memoir of Warner ↗, puts the joke in Warner’s mouth: “Everybody is talking about the weather, why doesn’t somebody do something?”
1905 onward — the first credits to Mark Twain appear, and by 1910 the New York Times is attributing it to “the late Mark Twain.” In 1912 the Courant answers back: “Mr. Warner once remarked that everybody talks about the weather but nobody seems to do anything about it” (Quote Investigator ↗).
✓Public domain
Every documented printing of this saying — the 1884 Chamber of Commerce proceedings, the 1889 Book Buyer, the 1897 and 1912 Hartford Courant, Howells’s tribute as reprinted in Annie Fields’s 1904 memoir — is an American work published long before 1931, so all of it is in the public domain in the United States. Warner himself died in 1900. The polished modern wording is a proverbial refinement with no identifiable later claimant.
Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.
Fact-check
Who gets the credit, and who earned it
This may be the single most reliably mis-credited sentence in American humour. It is printed under Twain’s name on mugs, in newscasts and in quotation dictionaries — and it is not in his work.
✕
The whole lineMark Twain Never in his writings
The Library of Congress reference Respectfully Quoted states flatly: “Generally, but perhaps mistakenly, attributed to MARK TWAIN. It has never been verified in his writings. Many quotation dictionaries credit Charles Dudley Warner, a friend of Twain’s, with this remark.” (entry 1982 ↗). A full-text search of Mark Twain’s Speeches ↗, which includes his New England weather address, turns up no version of it either.
✕
The 1897 editorial’s “well known American writer”Mark Twain Ambiguous, not evidence
The unsigned Hartford Courant editorial of August 1897 says only that “a well known American writer said once that, while everybody talked about the weather, nobody seemed to do anything about it.” The Yale Book of Quotations, as quoted by Quote Investigator ↗, notes the writer “is usually taken to be Twain, but the writer could also have been Charles Dudley Warner” — who was writing the paper’s editorials at the time.
✕
The polished modern wordingCharles Dudley Warner Smoothed by retelling
Warner’s recorded versions are looser: “a matter about which a great deal is said, but very little done” (1884), and “Everybody is talking about the weather, why doesn’t somebody do something?” in the tribute reprinted in Annie Fields’s 1904 memoir ↗. The neat modern balance belongs to a century of repetition, not to a single page.
✕
A rival Twain wordingMark Twain Recalled, never printed
Robert U. Johnson’s Remembered Yesterdays (1923) is quoted in Respectfully Quoted ↗ as saying: “Nor have I ever seen in print Mark’s saying about the weather.” Even Twain’s friends could only remember him repeating it.
✓The saying is Warner’s: versions are credited to him in print from 1884, and his own newspaper settled it in 1912 — “Mr. Warner once remarked that everybody talks about the weather but nobody seems to do anything about it” (Quote Investigator ↗).
Context
Why it stuck to Twain
Warner and Twain shared a Hartford neighbourhood, a publisher, a circle of friends and, in 1873, a book — The Gilded Age. When a witty nineteenth-century American remark goes looking for an owner, Twain is the gravity well it falls into, and this one had less distance to travel than most: it was already circulating inside Twain’s own social world.
Twain also had a prior claim on the subject. His after-dinner address on New England weather — printed as “The Weather” in Mark Twain’s Speeches ↗ — is a sustained comic riff on exactly this theme. It does not contain the famous sentence anywhere. But once the public filed “funny man, New England weather” under Twain, the sentence found its way into the same folder.
A remark that was never written down properly, made by a man who lived next door to a legend.
The wording never settled
The line survives in at least four shapes. In 1884 it is “a matter about which a great deal is said, but very little done.” In 1897 it is “while everybody talked about the weather, nobody seemed to do anything about it.” In Howells’s memorial tribute it is “Everybody is talking about the weather, why doesn’t somebody do something?” The 1912 Hartford Courant gives it in nearly the modern form: “Mr. Warner once remarked that everybody talks about the weather but nobody seems to do anything about it.”
That drift is itself the evidence. A line reported this many ways, by this many people, is a line that was spoken and remembered rather than composed on a page — which is why no manuscript will ever settle it, and why the tidy version everyone quotes today belongs to no one printing in particular.
Explore
Filed under
More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.
1829–1900 · American essayist, novelist & Hartford Courant editor
Charles Dudley Warner co-edited the Hartford Courant from 1867 and became one of the best-known American essayists of his generation, on the strength of gently comic books such as My Summer in a Garden and Being a Boy. He was Mark Twain’s Hartford neighbour, close friend and collaborator — the two wrote The Gilded Age: A Tale of To-day (1873) together, and gave an era its name. His wit survives mostly as remembered talk rather than printed text, which is precisely how his most famous line came loose from him.
For writers & researchers
Cite this
Primary record
Annie Fields, Charles Dudley Warner (New York: McClure, Phillips & Co., 1904), 206, quoting William Dean Howells’s “Editor’s Easy Chair” tribute in Harper’s Magazine: “Everybody is talking about the weather, why doesn’t somebody do something?” Earliest documented version located by Quote Investigator: Proceedings of the Chamber of Commerce of the State of New York, 18 November 1884, 58.
This verification page
Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Everybody Talks About the Weather, But Nobody Does Anything About It’?” Last verified 27 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/everybody-talks-about-the-weather-but-nobody-does-anything/