david strasser: laughter

Showing posts with label laughter. Show all posts

Thursday, September 12, 2019

Post #2914

Did you ever observe that immoderate laughter always ends in a sigh?
—Leigh Hunt

Wednesday, September 11, 2019

Post #2913

He is not always at ease who laughs.
―Charles de Saint-Évremond

Tuesday, September 20, 2016

Post #2167

Life without laughing is a dreary blank.
—William Makepeace Thackeray

Wednesday, June 08, 2016

Laughing is peculiar to man, but all men do not laugh for the same reason. There is the attic salt which springs from the charm in the words, from the flash of wit, from the spirited and brilliant sally. There is the low joke which arises from scurrility and idle conceit.
—Carlo Goldoni

Wednesday, December 09, 2015

Post #1963

It is a good thing to laugh, at any rate; and if a straw can tickle a man, it is an instrument of happiness. Beasts can weep when they suffer, but they cannot laugh.

—John Dryden

Monday, March 23, 2015

Post #1776

Man is the only animal with the powers of laughter, a privilege which was not bestowed on him for nothing. Let us then laugh while we may, no matter how broad the laugh may be, and despite of what the poet says about "the loud laugh that speaks the vacant mind." The mind should occasionally be vacant, as the land should lie fallow, and for precisely the same reason.
—Egerton Smith

Wednesday, January 15, 2014

Post #1458

Morally considered, laughter is next to the Ten Commandments.
—H.W. Shaw

Wednesday, July 07, 2010

Post #278

He who laughs - lasts.
—Wilfred Peterson

Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Post #200

If you lose the power to laugh, you lose the power to think.
—Clarence Darrow

The Penalty of Leadership

In every field of human endeavor, he that is first must perpetually live in the white light of publicity. ¶Whether the leadership be vested in a man or in a manufactured product, emulation and envy are ever at work. ¶In art, in literature, in music, in industry, the reward and the punishment are always the same. ¶The reward is widespread recognition; the punishment, fierce denial and detraction. ¶When a man’s work becomes a standard for the whole world, it also becomes a target for the shafts of the envious few. ¶If his work be mediocre, he will be left severely alone – if he achieve a masterpiece, it will set a million tongues a -wagging. ¶Jealousy does not protrude its forked tongue at the artist who produces a commonplace painting. ¶Whatsoever you write, or paint, or play, or sing, or build, no one will strive to surpass or to slander you unless your work be stamped with the seal of genius. ¶Long, long after a great work or a good work has been done, those who are disappointed or envious, continue to cry out that it cannot be done. Spiteful little voices in the domain of art were raised against our own Whistler as a mountebank, long after the big world had acclaimed him its greatest artistic genius. ¶Multitudes flocked to Bayreuth to worship at the musical shrine of Wagner, while the little group of those whom he had dethroned and displaced argued angrily that he was no musician at all. ¶The little world continued to protest that Fulton could never build a steamboat, while the big world flocked to the river banks to see his boat steam by. ¶The leader is assailed because he is a leader, and the effort to equal him is merely added proof of that leadership. Failing to equal or to excel, the follower seeks to depreciate and to destroy – but only confirms once more the superiority of that which he strives to supplant. ¶There is nothing new in this. It is as old as the world and as old as human passions – envy, fear, greed, ambition, and the desire to surpass. ¶And it all avails nothing. ¶If the leader truly leads, he remains – the leader. ¶Master-poet, master-painter, master-workman, each in his turn is assailed, and each holds his laurels through the ages. ¶That which is good or great makes itself known, no matter how loud the clamor of denial. ¶That which deserves to live — lives.
written by Theodore F. MacManus

david strasser

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