Hilarity

“ What various epochas in time; what various states of human power and human intellect, did not ye blend and harmonize, in one great picture! What a powerful influence were not your wildness and your solemnity, your grandeur and your gloom, calculated to produce upon the mind of religious enthusiasm, upon the spirit of genius and melancholy; upon a character, formed of all the higher elements of human nature, upon such a mind, upon such a genius, upon such a character as thine, Hilarion! ”

“ The strictest honour! and the finest taste!
Accept this verse; if satire can agree
With so consummate a humanity.
By your example would Hilario mend,
How would it grace the talents of my friend,
Who, with the charms of his own genius smit,
Conceives all virtues are compris'd in wit!
But time his fervent petulance may cool;
For though he is a wit, he is no fool.
In time he'll learn to use, not waste, his sense;
Nor make a frailty of an excellence.
He spares nor friend, nor foe; but calls to mind,
Like doomsday, all the faults of all mankind. ”

“ But his laughter has an echo that is grim.
When they're offered to the world in merry guise,
Unpleasant truths are swallowed with a will—
For he who'd make his fellow creatures wise
Should always gild the philosophic pill! ”

“ That she, of all people, who had seen into the darkest, most sordid depths of the human character, and long since learned to look upon goodness and virtue as exploded myths, should be set to work to draw up an ideal which she did not and could not believe in, seemed a mockery too pitiful for laughter. ”

“ There was laughter without joy—there was frivolity without merriment—there was the surface of enjoyment and the substance of woe, for beneath those painted cheeks was the pallor of despair and broken health, and beneath those whitened bosoms, half veiled with gaudy silks, were hearts that were aching with remorse, or, yet more unhappy, benumbed and callous with habitual sin. ”

“ If, however, I can, by lucky chance, in these days of evil, rub out one wrinkle from the brow of care, or beguile the heavy heart of one moment of sorrow; if I can, now and then, penetrate the gathering film of misanthropy, prompt a benevolent view of human nature, and make my reader more in good humor with his fellow beings and himself, surely, surely, I shall not then have written entirely in vain. ”

“ The manner in laughter, in tears, in irony, in indignations and enthusiasms, in judgments--and even in love. The manner in which, as in the features and character of a human face, the inner truth is foreshadowed for those who know how to look at their kind. ”

“ The only thing I can recommend at this stage is a sense of humor, an ability to see things in their ridiculous and absurd dimensions, to laugh at others and at ourselves, a sense of irony regarding everything that calls out for parody in this world. In other words, I can only recommend perspective and distance. Awareness of all the most dangerous kinds of vanity, both in others and in ourselves. ”

“ It is not long since ye were so fantastic, so young and naughty ... that ye made me sneeze and laugh.’ ‘Now the world laughs, the dismal veil is rent.’ ‘It is laughter that kills, not wrath. Come, let us kill the spirit of heaviness!’ ‘Truly there are beings chaste by nature; they are milder in heart; they laugh more agreeably and copiously than ye. ”

“ And beneath all the light wit which circulates, beneath all the laughter, which often has a false ring, each retains his or her particular worry, or distress of mind, at times so acute that it becomes perfect agony. ”

“ Moreover, while the operation terrified me, the skill with which it was accomplished filled me afresh with laughter [Pg 50] at the clumsiness of men by comparison. Our ignorant, bungling methods of teaching the minds of others, of inculcating ideas, and so on, overwhelmed me with laughter when I understood this superior and diabolical method. Yet my laughter seemed hollow and ghastly, and ideas of evil and tragedy trod close upon the heels of the comic. ”

“ We get no pleasure from them except that of hearty anger and strong contrast. Their hot, raw, garish colour—the chalky dry skin of his women—the grinning leathern faces of his men—and the entire absence of toning—are as offensive to our eyesight as the heartlessness, the grimace, the want of all naturalness in expression or feeling, in his human beings, are to our moral taste. ”

“ Those endless changes in fashions and in manners, which offer such obvious and ever-new subjects of ridicule; that infinite variety of tricks and manoeuvres by which the ludicrous may be produced, and curiosity and laughter excited: the admiration we so generally bestow upon satirical remark, pointed repartee, and whimsical combinations of ideas, have too often led her to forget the warmer interest we feel, and the more profitable lessons we receive from genuine representations of nature. ”

“ The usual Artillery of Ridicule is Wit; whereby the Affinity or Coincidence of any Object with others, which are absurd and contemptible, is unexpectedly exhibited;--There is also another, very forcible, Manner in which Ridicule may act; And that is by employing Humour alone; Thus the Foible or Queerness of any Person will be most fully ridicul'd, by naturally dressing yourself, or any other Person in that Foible, and exerting its full Strength and Vigour.
The Politeness of a Subject is the Freedom of that Subject from all Indelicacy, Aukardness, and Roughness. ”

“ Folly, that is, of a natural ideot, gives the face an habitual thoughtless, brainless grin. The eyes dance from object to object, without ever fixing steadily upon any one. A thousand different and incoherent passions, looks, gestures, speeches and absurdities, are played off every moment. ”

“ For hardier aspirants, the two main entrances to popular favour are by the twin gates of laughter and tears. Pathos knits the soul and braces the nerves, humour purges the eyesight and vivifies the sympathies ”

“ As a wry face without pain moves laughter, or a deformed vizard, or a rude clown dressed in a lady’s habit and using her actions; we dislike and scorn such representations which made the ancient philosophers ever think laughter unfitting in a wise man. ”

“ Nothing of a healthy, wholesome, vigorous, vital, individual, personal kind; but some pitiful pretence of wit or humor, having for its vague or indefinite object ideal or general, abstract, impersonal, or, so to speak, invisible intangible subjects, wanting all the vivacious pungent stimulus that belongs to real individual absurdity, and the direct ridicule of it, judiciously and dexterously applied; the only efficient—I had almost said legitimate—object of a rational creature's amusement. ”

“ As I am conjectured to have generally dealt in raillery and satire, both in prose and verse, if that conjecture be right, although such an opinion has been an absolute bar to my rising in the world; yet that very world must suppose that I followed what I thought to be my talent; and charitable people will suppose I had a design to laugh the follies of mankind out of countenance, and as often to lash the vices out of practice. ”

“ It were profanity For poor humanity To treat as vanity The sway of Love. In no locality Or principality Is our mortality It's sway above! Hilarion: When day is fading, With serenading And such frivolity Of tender quality— With scented showers Of fairest flowers, The happy hours Will gaily fly! The happy hours will gaily fly! Chorus: It were profanity For poor humanity To treat as vanity The sway of Love. In no locality Or principality Is our mortality It's sway above! ”

“ But this theory, whatever portion of truth it may contain, is, in the first place, open to the fatal objection that there are various humiliations to others which produce in us anything but laughter; and, in the second place, it does not apply to the many instances in which no one’s dignity is implicated: as when we laugh at a good pun. ”

“ All elegance of mind and manners is banished. A theatrical, bombastic, windy phraseology of heroic virtue, blended and mingled up with a worse dissoluteness, and joined to a murderous and savage ferocity, forms the tone and idiom of their language and their manners. ”

“ What a feeling it was!--yes, it was the same self-humiliation that she had felt once before, beneath the oak tree where, when flying as to-day from insults and sneers, she had met the handsome lad who had given her the prophetic book. But when would the prophecy in the fairy-tale be fulfilled? When should she cease to be laughed at, despised, and insulted? When should the lonely, persecuted, weary swan unfold its plumage upon calm waters in sunshine and peace? And in an access of pain she covered her face with her hands and burst into tears. ”

“ The usual reply to such questions is, that laughter results from a perception of incongruity. Even were there not on this reply the obvious criticism that laughter often occurs from extreme pleasure or from mere vivacity, there would still remain the real problem—How comes a sense of the incongruous to be followed by these peculiar bodily actions? Some have alleged that laughter is due to the pleasure of a relative self-elevation, which we feel on seeing the humiliation of others. ”

“ Say the glare, the identical dismay Of ugliness and evil, always, in all lands, And say Love, too,—and Politics, moreover, say, With ink-dishonored blood upon their shameless hands. And then, above all else, neglect not to recite Thy proper feats, thou dragging thy simplicity Wherever people love, wherever people fight, In such a sad and foolish kind, in verity! ”

“ The outward covering of infantile and childish innocence, with which those passions and propensities were enveloped, is broken through; those hidden evils, coming forth, cast off their gilded covering, and, with it, also, the beauty and the joy which it communicated. And then the anxieties and pains which evil and sin always bring in their train, nay, which belong to their very nature and are inseparable from them, begin to be felt. ”

“ I should like to see what would become of you, with your contradictory, impulsive artist nature, to-day 'Hosanna' and to-morrow 'Crucify Him,' if I did not maintain calmness and steadiness for you. If I, who bear the responsibility of acting, changed my opinions as quickly as you do and converted each of your momentary impulses into an act--I ought at least to possess the power to kill to-day, and to-morrow, when you repented, restore the person to life. ”

“ A star with a crimson mouth has arisen in the East to guide wise men and women out of the straight and narrow way down which they have been stumbling so long. I believe, I tremblingly dare to believe, that a bright era of undisciplined folly is about to dawn over the modern world, and therefore I speak to you, beautiful pink children, and I ask you to recognise your youth, and your exquisite potentiality for foolishness. ”

“ And thus, slowly and persistently the young man's childhood superstitions attained the upper hand and mystery clutched him in its iron claws. At times he was ready to burst into laughter, and with a certain vexation he did laugh at himself. ”

“ In the exercise of my vocation I have frequently found myself in peculiar and unpleasant positions, but never before have I been in a situation so embarrassing, so humiliating, as this. In the course of my studies and experiences I have found that in literature and journalism, as well as in art, one can make a true picture only of what one has seen. ”

“ Is not everything one sees merely a complex of inharmonious bombast, aped gesticulations, arrogant superficiality?—a ragged suit of motley for the naked and the shivering? A seeming dance of joy enjoined upon a sufferer? ”

“ I am quaintly interesting—the while in my sleeve I may be smiling and smiling—and a villain. I can talk to a roomful of dull people and compel their interest, admiration, and astonishment. I do this sometimes for my own amusement. As I have said, I am a rather plain-featured, insignificant-looking genius, but I have a graceful personality. ”

“ Such belief would add a keenness to the zest in their enjoyment, and slay that sneering laughter of which a man grimaces to the fiends, as well as that feeble laughter in which neither heart nor intellect has a share. ”

“ It shall be a figure of which the preconceived idea was either worthy or dreadful—which suddenly we have presented to us shorn of its superior attributes. Ideals are unconsciously enshrined in the mind, and when images proclaiming themselves the same ideals appear in sharp degraded contrast—we laugh. ”

“ Their satisfactions are so rapid and violent that satiety, aversion, and flight into the antithetical taste, immediately follow upon them: in this contrast the convulsion of feeling liberates itself, in one person by sudden coldness, in another by laughter, and in a third by tears and self-sacrifice. ”

“ I have still some vague recollection of an endeavour I made to trace the character of the insanity in every case to some early trait of the individual in childhood, when, overcome by passion or overbalanced by excitement, the faculties run wild into all those excesses which in after years develop eccentricities of character, and in some weaker temperaments aberrations of intellect. ”

“ Ridiculous systems wound over the earth like a snake Devouring the children of Fear! Ridiculous customs, Ridiculous judgments and laws, philosophies, worships. You saw through and laughed at—you saw above all That a soul must make end with a groan, or a curse, or a laugh. ”

“ Considered from the purely psychological point of view, the mental state which shows itself in laughter consists, according to some, in the consciousness of incongruity, of a certain kind of contradiction; according to others, in a consciousness of superiority in relation to men and things on the part of the laugher. ”