No god and no religion can survive ridicule. No church, no nobility, no royalty or other fraud, can face ridicule in a fair field and live.
- Mark Twain...Notebook, 1888
There is no character, howsoever good and fine, but it can be destroyed by ridicule, howsoever poor and witless. Observe the ass, for instance: his character is about perfect, he is the choicest spirit among all the humbler animals, yet see what ridicule has brought him to. Instead of feeling complimented when we are called an ass, we are left in doubt.
- Mark Twain...Pudd'nhead Wilson
Sense of ridicule is bitterer than death & more feared. -- men commit suicide daily to escape it.
- Mark Twain's Notebooks and Journals, Vol. 3, p. 346.
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- Wonder why authors and actors are ashamed of being funny?
--Why, there are obvious reasons, and deep philosophical ones.
The clown knows very well that the women are not in love with
him, but with Hamlet, the fellow in the black cloak and plumed
hat. Passion never laughs. The wit knows that his place is
at the tail of a procession.
If you want the deep underlying reason, I must take more time
to tell it. There is a perfect consciousness in every form
of wit--using that term in its general sense--that its essence
consists in a partial and incomplete view of whatever it touches.
It throws a single ray, separated from the rest,--red, yellow,
blue, or any intermediate shade,--upon an object; never white
light; that is the province of wisdom. We get beautiful effects
from wit,--all the prismatic colors,--but never the object as
it is in fair daylight. A pun, which is a kind if wit, is a
different and much shallower trick in mental optics throwing
the SHADOWS of two objects so that one overlies the other.
Poetry uses the rainbow tints for special effects, but always
keeps its essential object in the purest white light of truth...
....Oliver Wendell Holmes..Autocrat of the Breakfast Table
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