It is not very comfortable to have the gift of being amused at one's own absurdity.
 W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage (1915). copy citation

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Author W. Somerset Maugham
Source Of Human Bondage
Topic absurdity gift
Date 1915
Language English
Reference
Note
Weblink http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/351/pg351-images.html

Context

“He was disappointed, irritated even, but his vanity was more affected than his heart. He knew that himself. And presently he grew conscious that the gods had played a very good practical joke on him, and he laughed at himself mirthlessly. It is not very comfortable to have the gift of being amused at one's own absurdity. LXXX For the next three months Philip worked on subjects which were new to him. The unwieldy crowd which had entered the Medical School nearly two years before had thinned out: some had left the hospital, finding the examinations more difficult to pass than they expected, some had been taken away by parents who had not foreseen the expense of life in London, and some had drifted away to other callings.” source