Humour is the describing the ludicrous as it is in itself; wit is the exposing it, by comparing or contrasting it with something e...lse. Humour is, as it were, the growth of nature and accident; wit is the product of art and fancy.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The Hacker Ethic: Access to computers--and anything which might teach you something about the way the world works--should be unlim...ited and total. Always yield to the Hands-On Imperative! All information should be free. Mistrust authority--promote decentralization. Hackers should be judged by their hacking, not bogus criteria such as degrees, age, race, or position. You can create art and beauty on a computer. Computers can change your life for the better.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It will be agreed that the essential difference between humour and wit is that, whereas wit is always intentional, humour is alway...s unintentional. Wit possess an object; it is critical, aggressive, and often cruel; it depends for its success upon condescension, revelation, suddenness, and surprise, and it necessitates a quick and deliberate motion of the mind; it is not a private indulgence but invariably needs an audience; it is thus a social phenomenon. Humour on the other hand has no object; it does not seek to wound others, it seeks only to protect the self; it is not a sword but a shield. So far from entailing an expenditure of intellectual or psychic effort, it seeks to economise that effort; it does not depend on suddenness or surprise, but is contemplative, conciliatory, ruminating; and it is largely a private indulgence and does not require an audience for its enjoyment.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The British are a self-distrustful, diffident people, agreeing with alacrity that they are neither successful nor clever, and only... modestly claiming that they have a keener sense of humour, more robust common sense, and greater staying power as a nation than all the rest of the world put together.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Cold eyes ... steel grey, rather small, not unpleasant in good-humour, diabolic in a passion, but worst when a little suspicious; ...then they watch you as though you were a young rattle-snake, to be killed when convenient.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Among all kinds of Writing, there is none in which Authors are more apt to miscarry than in Works of Humour, as there is none in w...hich they are more ambitious to excel.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Although our productions have afforded more extensive and unaffected pleasure than those of any other literary corporation in the ...world, no species of composition has been so much decried.... "And what are you reading, Miss--?" "Oh! it is only a novel!" replies the young lady; while she lays down her book with affected indifference, or momentary shame. "It is only Cecilia, or Camilla, or Belinda"; or, in short, only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour, are conveyed to the world in the best chosen language.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
"It is only Cecilia, or Camilla, or Belinda;" or, in short, only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed,... in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties and humour are conveyed to the world in the best chosen language.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
If a dog doesn't put you first where are you both? In what relation? A dog needs God. It lives by your glances, your wishes. It ev...en shares your humour. This happens about the fifth year. If it doesn't happen you are only keeping an animal.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A language is therefore a horizon, and style a vertical dimension, which together map out for the writer a Nature, since he does n...ot choose either. The language functions negatively, as the initial limit of the possible, style is a Necessity which binds the writer's humour to his form of expression. In the former, he finds a familiar History, in the latter, a familiar personal past. In both cases he deals with a Nature, that is, a familiar repertory of gestures, a gestuary, as it were, in which the energy expended is purely operative, serving here to enumerate, there to transform, but never to appraise or signify a choice.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »