---
To say that I've had it easy, is to not know what I hide
---
"I am not around to feed the needs of your ego. If it can't be JUST ME, it JUST CAN'T BE
---
Once I thought that to be human was the highest aim a man could have, but I see now that it was meant to destroy me. Today I am proud to say that I am inhuman, that I belong not to men and governments, that I have nothing to do with creeds and principals. I have nothing to do with the creaking machine of humanity---I belong to the earth!
Side by side with the human race there runs another race of beings, the inhuman ones, the race of artists who, goaded by unknown impulses, take the lifeless mass of humanity and by the fever and ferment with which they imbue it, turn this soggy dough into bread and the bread into wine and the wine into song. Out of the dead compost and the inert slag they breed a song that contaminates. I see this other race of individuals ransacking the universe, turning everything upside down, their feet always moving in blood and tears, their hands always empty, always grasping and clutching for the beyond, for the god out of reach; slaying everything within reach in order to quiet the monster which gnaws at their vitals. I see that when they tear their hair with the effort to comprehend, to seize this forever unattainable, I see that when they bellow like crazed beasts and rip and gore, I see that this is right, that there is no other path to pursue. A man that belongs to this race must stand up on the high place with gibberish in his mouth and rip out his entrails. It is right and just, because he must! And anything that falls short of this frightening spectacle, anything less shuddering, less terrifying, less mad, less intoxicating, less contaminating, is not art. The rest is counterfeit. The rest is human. The rest belongs to life and lifelessness
Henry Miller
excerpt taken from "Tropic of Cancer"
---
Obstructions of the mind silence vibrations of the heart
----
There is someone out there who can love me better than he. Not more, just better. Where are you?
---
Let my rewards be equal,
to that of the risks;
which I am willing to take
---
Who is this brave young man, who had such ideas as these?
Just me
waiting for someone to share the risk with
she never arrives........maybe she's the risk
Or maybe she is the reward
Will I ever know which?
--
alas ... it is but human intervention and error that threatens the lives
of such great creatures and plants. for what we fear, do not understand
and envy, is what we seek to destroy.
---
Allow me to pose a question: Will there be marshmallow's in hell?
---
my heart aches to be heard, yet when i try my words are silent
---
"Fere libenter homines id quod volunt credunt."
(Men are nearly always willing to believe what they wish.)
-- Julius Caesar, 102? - 44 BCE
---
"Nemo me impune lacessit."
(No one provokes me with impunity.)
-- Motto of the Crown of Scotland and of all Scottish regiments
---
To die will be an awfully big adventure."
-- Sir James Matthew Barrie (1860-1937), British writer
---
"Unable are the Loved to die For Love is Immortality."
-- Jean Pierre Claris De Florian
----
"An answer is always a form of death."
-- John (The Magus) Fowles (b. 1926), English novelist, "The Collector," A Maggot"
---
"Doubt of the reality of love ends by making us doubt everything."
-- Henri-Frédéric Amiel (1821-81), Swiss philosopher, poet
----
"I love you, and because I love you, I would sooner have you hate me for telling you the truth than adore me for telling you lies."
-- Pietro Aretino (1492-1556), Italian poet, writer, dramatist
------
"In dreams and in love there are no impossibilities."
-- Janos Arnay
-----
"The image of myself which I try to create in my own mind in order that I may love myself is very different from the image which I try to create in the minds of others in order that they may love me."
-- Wystan Hugh Auden (1907-73), British-born American writer, critic
------
"Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it."
-- Russell Wayne Baker (b. 1925), American author, writer
-----
The more one judges, the less one loves."
-- Honoré de Balzac (1799-1850), French writer
-----
It is one of the severest tests of friendship to tell your friend his faults. So to love a man that you cannot bear to see a stain upon him, and to speak painful truth through loving words, that is friendship."
-- Henry Ward Beecher (1813-87), American clergyman
-----
The only way of knowing a person is to love them without hope."
-- Walter Benjamin (1892-1940), German essayist, philosopher,
----
"They say a person needs just three things to be truly happy in this world: someone to love, something to do, and something to hope for."
-- Thomas Edward Bodett (b. 1955), American writer, announcer, known as "Tom Bodett
----
"Your life and my life flow into each other as wave flows into wave, and unless there is peace and joy and freedom for you, there can be no real peace or joy or freedom for me. To see reality--not as we expect it to be but as it is--is to see that unless we live for each other and in and through each other, we do not really live very satisfactorily; that there can really be life only where there really is, in just this sense, love."
-- (Carl) Frederick Buechner (b. 1926), American writer, author, "The Alphabet of Grace," "The Entrance to Porlock"
-------
"I loved you in the morning, our kisses deep and warm, your hair upon the pillow like a sleepy, golden storm, yes many loved before us, I know we are not new, in city and in forest they smiled like me and you, but now it's come to distances and both of us must try, your eyes are soft with sorrow, Hey, that's no way to say goodbye."
-- Leonard (Norman) Cohen (b. 1934), Canadian writer, author, "Absurd Prayer," "As the Mist Leaves No Scar"
----
"All thoughts, all passions, all delights, Whatever stirs this mortal frame, All are but ministers of Love, And feed his sacred flame."
-- Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834), English poet, critic
----
"I have often been downcast, but never in despair; I regard our hiding as a dangerous adventure, romantic and interesting at the same time. In my diary I treat all the privations as amusing. I have made up my mind now to lead a different life from other girls and, later on, different from ordinary housewives. My start has been so very full of interest, and that is the sole reason why I have to laugh at the humorous side of the most dangerous moments."
-- Anne Frank (1929-45), German Jewish refugee, diarist, captured and sent to concentration camp
-----
"Today I begin to understand what love must be, if it exists.... When we are parted, we each feel the lack of the other half of ourselves. We are incomplete like a book in two volumes of which the first has been lost. That is what I imagine love to be: incompleteness in absence."
-- Erich Fromm (1900-80), German-born American psychoanalyst, emphasized role of social conditioning
----
"We are never so defensless against suffering as when we love."
-- Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), Austrian physician, founder of psychoanalysis
----
"Who will tell whether one happy moment of love, or the joy of breathing or walking on a bright morning and smelling the fresh air, is not worth all the suffering and effort which life implies?"
-- Erich Fromm (1900-80), German-born American psychoanalyst, emphasized role of social conditioning
----
"Ever has it been that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation."
-- Kahlil Gibran (1883-1931), Lebanese-born American mystic poet, painter, "The Prophet"
----
If I love you, what business is it of yours?"
-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832), German writer, scientist, master of poetry, drama and novel
----
"Looking back, I have this to regret, that too often when I loved, I did not say so."
-- David Grayson (1890-1990)
----
"To be capable of steady friendship or lasting love, are the two greatest proofs, not only of goodness of heart, but of strength of mind."
-- William Hazlitt (1778-1830), British essayist noted for literary criticism
----
"If two people love each other, there can be no happy end to it."
-- Ernest Miller Hemingway (1899-1961), American writer, journalist, adventurer, expatriate
----
"The only people for me are the mad ones. The ones who are mad to love, mad to talk, mad to be saved; the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow Roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars."
-- Jack Kerouac (1922-69), American writer, leading figure of the beat generation, "On the Road"
----
"To a person in love, the value of the individual is intuitively known. Love needs no logic for its mission."
-- Charles Augustus Lindbergh (1902-74), American aviator, "Lucky Lindy," made 1st solo transatlantic flight
-----
"If a man should importune me to give a reason why I loved him, I find it could no otherwise be expressed, than by making answer: because it was he, because it was I."
-- Michel Eyquem de Montaigne (1533-92), French essayist, considered highest expression of 16th century prose
----
"A man reserves his true and deepest love not for the species of woman in whose company he finds himself electrified and enkindled, but for that one in whose company he may feel tenderly drowsy."
-- Thomas Moore (1779-1852), Irish romantic poet, "The Minstrel
----
"Put love first. Entertain thoughts that give life. And when a thought or resentment, or hurt, or fear comes your way, have another thought that is more powerful -- a thought that is love."
-- Mary Manin Morrissey
---
"The bonds that unite another person to ourselves exist only in our mind. Memory as it grows fainter relaxes them, and notwithstanding the illusion by which we would fain be cheated and with which, out of love, friendship, politeness, deference, duty, we cheat other people, we exist alone. Man is the creature that cannot emerge from himself, that knows his fellows only in himself; when he asserts the contrary, he is lying."
-- Marcel Proust (1871-1922), French writer, "Remembrance of Things Past
----
"Cuando amor no es locura, no es amor. (When love is not madness, it is not love.)"
-- Spanish Proverb
----
"Blow O wind to where my loved one is. Touch him and come touch me soon. I'll feel his gentle touch through you and meet his beauty in the moon. These things are much for the one who loves. One can live by them alone: that he and I breathe the same air and that the Earth we tread is one."
-- Ramayana, Classical Sanskrit epic of India
----
"And if it all falls apart, I will know deep in my heart, the only dream that mattered had come true. In this life, I was loved by you."
-- Colin Raye
----
"I laugh, I love, I hope, I try I hurt, I need, I fear, I cry. And I know you do the same things too, So we're really not that different, me and you."
-- Colin Raye
----
"All the passions make us commit faults; love makes us commit the most ridiculous ones."
-- François Duc de La Rochefoucauld (1613-80), French writer, moralist
----
"Love is an attachment to another self. Humor is a form of self-detachment -- a way of looking at one's existence, one's misfortune, or one's discomfort. If you really love, if you really know how to laugh, the result is the same: you forget yourself."
-- Claude Roy
----
"'Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind."
-- Bertrand Russel (1872-1970), British philosopher, mathematician, social critic, writer
----
"Why was I so blind that I couldn't see our love was changing underneath our very noses?"
-- Jessica Sharp
----
"When delicate and feeling souls are separated, there is not a feature in the sky, not a movement of the elements, not an aspiration of the breeze, but hints some cause for a lover's apprehension."
-- Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751-1816), Anglo-Irish dramatist
----
"Trouble is part of your life, and if you don't share it, you don't give the person who loves you a chance to love you enough."
-- Dinah Shore, American actress/performer
----
"I had found a kind of serenity, a new maturity... I didn't feel better or stronger than anyone else but it seemed no longer important whether everyone loved me or not--more important now was for me to love them. Feeling that way turns your whole life around; living becomes the act of giving."
-- Beverly Sills (b. 1929), American operatic soprano, manager
----
A slight touch of friendly malice and amusement towards those we love keeps our affections for them from turning flat."
-- Logan Pearsall Smith (1865-1946), American essayist, aphorist
----
"Oh, I have loved him too much to feel no hate for him."
-- August Strindberg
----
"I know of no more disagreeable situation than to be left feeling generally angry without anybody in particular to be angry at."
-- Frank Moore Colby (1865-1925), American editor, essayist
----
"No one can persuade another to change. Each of us guards a gate of change that can only be opened from the inside. We cannot open the gate of another, either by argument or emotional appeal."
-- Marilyn Ferguson (c 1920), [Ma] Governor of Texas
----
"With reasonable men, I will reason; with humane men I will plead; but to tyrants I will give no quarter, nor waste arguments where they will certainly be lost."
-- William Lloyd Garrison
----
"I never make the mistake of arguing with people for whose opinions I have no respect."
-- Edward Gibbon (1737-94), British historian, writer, "The ... Decline and Fall Roman … Empire"
----
It makes me mad when people say I turned and ran like a scared rabbit. Maybe it was like an angry rabbit, who was going to fight in another fight, away from the first fight."
-- Jack Handey [Deep Thoughts], Recurring Saturday Night Live comedy bit
----
"The people to fear are not those who disagree with you, but those who disagree with you and are too cowardly to let you know."
-- Joe Moore
----
"Truth often suffers more by the heat of its defenders than the arguments of its opponents."
-- Sir William Penn (1621-70), English admiral led fleet during Dutch War
----
Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle."
-- Plato (427?-347? BC), Greek philosopher, follower of Socrates, "The Republic"
----
"When elephants fight, it is the grass who suffers."
-- African Proverb
----
"It is better to be defeated on principle than to win on lies."
-- Arthur Calwell
----
"Every day I live I am more convinced that the waste of life lies in the love we have not given, the powers we have not used, the selfish prudence that will risk nothing and which, shirking pain, misses happiness as well."
-- Mary Cholmondeley
----
"Talent, lying in the understanding, is often inherited; genius, being the action of reason or imagination, rarely or never."
-- Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834), English poet, critic
----
"It was all right to talk about it. They made plans. They had a moment's vision, a fleeting dream. But in the end, some lack in their moral fiber, some gnawing, nibbling fear held them back. They never started. They stayed where they were. They dropped back. They failed somehow to release within themselves that power which lies in every individual, and is released only when he starts forward in a straight line for the object about which he has dreamed. The man who never starts, never feels that sense of power."
-- Ray Dickinson
----
"We swallow greedily any lie that flatters us, but we sip little by little at a truth we find bitter."
-- Denis Diderot (1713-84), French philosopher, writer
----
"Your intellect may be confused, but your emotions will never lie to you."
-- Roger (Joseph) Ebert (b. 1942), American movie critic, columnist
----
"I firmly believe that any man's finest hour, the greatest fulfillment of all that he holds dear, is that moment when he has worked his heart out in a good cause and lies exhausted on the field of battle - victorious."
-- Vincent Thomas "Vince" Lombardi (1913-70), American football coach, led Green Bay Packers to 6 conference titles
----
"I'd rather go on hearing your lies than to go on living without you."
-- Elvis Aron Presley (1935-77), American singer, known as "the King"
----
The cruelest lies are often told in silence."
-- Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson (1850-94), British writer, essayist, poet, novelist, "Treasure Island"
----
"That which has been believed by everyone, always and everywhere, has every chance of being false."
-- Paul Ambroise Valery (1871-1945), French poet, "La Jeune Parque," "Le Cimitiere Marin"
----
"Perhaps nobody ever accomplishes all that he feels lies in him to do; but nearly every one who tries his power touches the walls of his being."
-- Charles Dudley Warner
----
"Seeking to forget makes exile all the longer; the secret of redemption lies in remembrance."
-- Richard von Weizsäcker, President of West Germany
----
"A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep."
-- Saul Bellow (b. 1915), Canadian-born American writer
----
"I do not believe in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance."
-- Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881), British historian, essayist
----
"Nothing is more terrible than ignorance in action."
-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832), German writer, scientist, master of poetry, drama and novel
----
"The little I know, I owe to my ignorance."
-- Sacha Guitry (1885-1957)
----
"It is only by not trusting that you turn someone into a liar."
-- Tao Le Ching
----
"We do not attract what we want, But what we are."
-- James Lane Allen (1849-1923), American novelist
----
"If all the world's a stage, I want to operate the trap door."
-- Paul Beatty
----
"In the face of an obstacle which is impossible to overcome, stubbornness is stupid."
-- Simone de Beauvoir (1908-86), French writer, feminist
----
Use soft words and hard arguments."
-- English Proverb
----
"Take care, don't fight, and remember: if you do not choose to lead, you will forever be led by others. Find what scares you, and do it. And you can make a difference, if you choose to do so."
-- J. Michael Straczynski
----
"Do not think that your Learning and Genius, your Wit or Sprightliness, are welcome everywhere. I was once told that my Company was disagreeable because I appeared so uncommonly happy."
-- Johann Georg von Zimmerman
----
"Only in the agony of parting do we look into the depths of love."
-- George Eliot (1819-80), [Mary Ann Evans] British writer
----
"Goodbye, goodbye, I hate the word. Solitude has long since turned brown and withered, sitting bitter in my mouth and heavy in my veins."
-- R. M. Grenon
----
"Could we see when and where we are to meet again, we would be more tender when we bid our friends goodbye."
-- Marie Louise De La Ramee, [Ouida]
----
"To find a fault is easy; to do better may be difficult."
-- (Arthur) Clive (Howard) Bell (1881-1964), British critic
----
"At different stages in our lives, the signs of love may vary: dependence, attraction, contentment, worry, loyalty, grief, but at heart the source is always the same. Human beings have the rare capacity to connect with each other, against all odds."
-- Michael Dorris
----
"He fell in love with himself at first sight, and it is a passion to which he has always remained faithful. Self-love seems so often unrequited."
-- Anthony Powell
----
"The meaning I picked, the one that changed my life: Overcome fear, behold wonder."
-- Æschylus (525-456 BC), Greek tragic dramatist
----
"Hold tenderly that which you cherish, for it is precious and a tight grip may crush it. Do not let the fear of dropping it cause you to hold it too tightly; the chances are, it's holding you too."
-- Bob Alberti
----
"Only a brave person is willing to honestly admit, and fearlessly to face, what a sincere and logical mind discovers."
-- Rodan of Alexandria
----
"'Come to the edge,' He said. They said, 'We are afraid.' 'Come to the edge,' He said. They came. He pushed them...and they flew."
-- Guillaume Apollinaire
----
"Where so many hours have been spent in convincing myself that I am right, is there not some reason to fear I may be wrong?"
-- Jane Austen (1775-1817), British writer
----
"Anything I've ever done that ultimately was worthwhile... initially scared me to death."
-- Betty Bender
----
"Anxiety is a thin stream of fear trickling through the mind. If encouraged, it cuts a channel into which all other thoughts are drained."
-- Robert Albert Bloch (b. 1917), American screen writer, "Psycho," "Psycho II"
----
"I feel my immortality over sweep all pains, all tears, all time, all fears, - and peal, like the eternal thunders of the deep, into my ears, this truth, - thou livest forever!"
-- George Gordon Byron (1788-1824), [Lord Byron] English romantic poet
----
"Don't put too fine a point to your wit for fear it should get blunted."
-- Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616), Spanish writer
----
"How does one kill fear, I wonder? How do you shoot a spectre through the heart, slash off its spectral head, take it by the spectral throat?"
-- Joseph Conrad (1857-1924), Polish-born British novelist, master of narrative technique
----
"The difference between greatness and mediocrity is often how an individual views a mistake..."
-- Nelson Boswell
----
"A stiff apology is a second insult…. The injured party does not want to be compensated because he has been wronged; he wants to be healed because he has been hurt."
-- Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936), British writer, critic
----
"If you can't ignore an insult, top it; if you can't top it, laugh it off; and if you can't laugh it off, it's probably deserved."
-- J. Russel Lynes (1910-91), US editor, critic, author
----
"I've always followed my father's advice: He told me, first, to always keep my word and, second, to never insult anybody unintentionally. If I insult you, you can be goddam sure I intend to. And, third, he told me not to go around looking for trouble."
-- John Wayne, [Marion Morrison] American western movie star
----
"Before speaking, consider the interpretation of your words as well as their intent."
-- Andrew Alden
----
"All doubt, despair, and fear become insignificant once the intention of life becomes love, rather than dependence on love."
-- Sri da Avabhas (Adi Da Samraj)
----
"Truth that's told with bad intent Beats all the Lies you can invent."
-- William Blake (1757-1827), British poet, artist, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
----
The countenance is the portrait of the soul, and the eyes mark its intentions."
-- Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BC), Roman statesman, orator, philosopher
----
"Maybe intentions are the lies in the dark we tell ourselves when who we are falls short of the mark and when we destroy our neighbor we can say 'I never meant any harm.'"
-- Danielle Donoho
----
"If it's meant to be; it's up to me."
-- Terri Gulick
----
"Once in a while you meet someone, and soon you both discover the two of you are truly something special to each other... you share your thoughts and feelings so relaxed, so openly, and right away you know your friendship's truly meant to be."
-- Gary Harrington
----
"Perhaps extreme danger strips us of all pretenses, all ambitions, all confusions, focusing us more intensely than we are otherwise ever focused, so that we remember what we otherwise spend most of our lives forgetting: that our nature and purpose is, more than anything else, to love and to make love, to take joy from the beauty of the world, to live with an awareness that the future is not as real a place for any of us as are the present and the past."
-- Dean Koontz, American horror author
----
"Never let the odds keep you from pursuing What you know in your heart you were meant to do."
-- Leroy Robert "Satchel" Paige (1906-82), [Satchel] American baseball player, 1st Black pitcher in American League
----
"Absence abates a moderate passion and intensifies a great one- as the wind blows out a candle but fans fire into flame. (Maxims)"
-- François Duc de La Rochefoucauld (1613-80), French writer, moralist
----
"Find expression for a sorrow, and it will become dear to you. Find expression for a joy, and you will intensify its ectasy."
-- Oscar Fingall O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (1854-1900), Irish writer, playwright, "The Importance of Being Earnest" "Picture of Dorian Gray"
----
"Things fall apart; the center cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world … The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity."
-- William Butler Yeats (1865-1939), Irish writer, considered of the greatest poets of 20th century
----
"What's meant to be will always find a way."
----
"So many tangles in life are ultimately hopeless that we have no appropriate sword other than laughter."
-- Gordon William Allport (1897-1967), American psychologist, known for "theory of personality"
----
"My life has been one great big joke A dance that's walked A song that's spoke, I laugh so hard I almost choke When I think about myself."
-- Maya Angelou (b. 1928), African-American author, poet laureate, performer, composer
----
"The humorous man recognizes that absolute purity, absolute justice, absolute logic and perfection are beyond human achievement and that men have been able to live happily for thousands of years in a state of genial frailty."
-- (Justin) Brooks Atkinson (1894-1984), American theater critic for "New York Tmes
----
"In those whom I like, I can find no common denominator; in those whom I love I can: they all make me laugh."
-- Wystan Hugh Auden (1907-73), British-born American writer
----
"My way of joking is to tell the truth. It's the funniest joke in the world."
-- Sir Walter Besant (1836-1901), English novelist
----
"A new idea is delicate. It can be killed by a sneer or a yawn; it can be stabbed to death by a joke or worried to death by a frown on the right person's brow."
-- Charles Hendrickson Brower (1901-84), President, Batten, Barton, Durstine & Osborn
----
"You have to walk carefully in the beginning of love; the running across fields into your lover's arms can only come later when you're sure they won't laugh if you trip."
-- Jonathan Carroll (b. 1949), American writer, author
----
"Your joy is your sorrow unmasked. And the self-same well from which your laughter rises was often-times filled with your tears."
-- René Descartes (1596-1650), French mathematician, philosopher, father of analytic geometry
----
"If you wish to glimpse inside a human soul and get to know a man, don't bother analyzing his ways of being silent, of talking, of weeping, of seeing how much he is moved by noble ideas; you will get better results if you just watch him laugh. If he laughs well, he's a good man."
-- Feodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky (1821-81), Russian novelist, engineer, novelist
----
"I believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge That myth is more potent than history That dreams are more powerful than facts That hope always triumphs over experience That laughter is the only cure for grief And I believe that love is stronger than death."
-- Robert (L.) Fulghum (b. 1937), American writer, author
----
"One doesn't have a sense of humor. It has you."
-- Larry Gelbart
----
"And if I laugh at any mortal thing, This that I may not weep."
-- George Gordon, [Lord Byron]
----
"I hope that someday we will be able to put away our fears and prejudices and just laugh at people."
-- Jack Handey [Deep Thoughts], Recurring Saturday Night Live comedy bit
----
"Separated lovers cheat absence by a thousand fancies which have their own reality. They are prevented from seeing one another and they cannot write; nevertheless they find countless mysterious ways of corresponding, by sending each other the song of birds, the scent of flowers, the laughter of children, the light of the sun, the sighing of the wind, and the gleam of the stars-all the beauties of creation."
-- Victor Hugo (1802-85), French poet, dramatist, writer, "The Hunchback of Notre Dame"
----
"A person reveals his character by nothing so clearly as the joke he resents."
-- Georg Christopher Lichtenberg (1742-99), German physicist, philosopher
----
"With the fearful strain that is on me night and day, if I did not laugh I should die."
-- Abraham Lincoln (1809-65), 16th US President, Republican
----
"If you can't ignore an insult, top it; if you can't top it, laugh it off; and if you can't laugh it off, it's probably deserved."
-- J. Russel Lynes (1910-91), US editor, critic, author
----
"It's no accident many accuse me of conducting public affairs with my heart instead of my head. Well, what if I do? ... Those who don't know how to weep with their whole heart don't know how to laugh either."
-- Golda Meir (1898-1978), Prime Minister of Israel
----
"Silence will not betray your thoughts but the expression on your face will. Humor has a hundred faces; tragedy only a few."
-- H. G. Mendelson
----
"The truth is, laughter always sounds more perfect than weeping. Laughter flows in a violent riff and is effortlessly melodic. Weeping is often fought, choked, half strangled, or surrendered to with humiliation."
-- Anne Rice
----
"Love is an attachment to another self. Humor is a form of self-detachment -- a way of looking at one's existence, one's misfortune, or one's discomfort. If you really love, if you really know how to laugh, the result is the same: you forget yourself."
-- Claude Roy
----
"Nothing is more curious than the almost savage hostility that humor excites in those who lack it."
-- George Saintsbury
----
"What makes life worth living? To be born with the gift of laughter and sense that the world is mad."
-- Searamouche
----
"A laugh is a smile that bursts."
-- Mary H. Waldrip
---
"This I conceive to be the chemical function of humor: to change the character of our thought."
-- Lin Yutang
----
"What I want to do is make people laugh so that they'll see things seriously."
-- William Zinsser
----