Ill-humor

“ Was moved by laughter innocent of hate,
Chastising clean of spite, that moulded them
Into the antic likeness of his toad
Bidding for laughter underneath the leaves.
He bowed not, nor disputed, but he saw
Those ill-created joyless gods, and loathed,
And saw them creeping, creeping round the walls,
Death breeding death, wile witnessing to wile,
And sickened at the dull iniquity
Should be rewarded, and for ever breathe
Contagion on the folk gathered in prayer. ”

“ It was as if he had suddenly become obsessed by a grim sense of humor. It was incredible. I felt my bones turn to jelly, and a shiver of amazement went through me. For seconds every one was jarred speechless ”

“ But if vice, divested of disgust and terror, is thus in its own nature ridiculous, we ought not to be surprized if the very same vices which spread horror and desolation thro' the Tragic scene should yet furnish the Comic with its highest laughter and delight, and that tears, and mirth, and even humour and wit itself, should grow from the same root of incongruity: For what is humour in the humourist, but incongruity, whether of sentiment, conduct, or manners? What in the man of humour, but a quick discernment and keen sensibility of these incongruities? ”

“ He was endowed in large measure with a biting, caustic humour, and with a coarse, scoffing, profane wit; therewithal he had an exaggerated grotesqueness of look and manner, such as to awaken mixed emotions of fear, mirth, and disgust. In these qualities of mind and person, together with the essential malignity of which they are the proper surface and outside, we have the germs of both Comedy and Tragedy. For the horrible and the ridiculous easily pass into each other, they being indeed different phases of the same thing. ”

“ All this was so violent and so strange, that he suddenly felt within him that species of indescribable movement which no man experiences more than twice or thrice in his life,—a sort of convulsion of the conscience, which disturbs everything doubtful in the heart, which is composed of irony, joy, and despair, and what might be called an internal burst of laughter. ”

“ That eternal and fatal law by which the grotesque is linked with the sublime—by which the laugh re-echoes the groan, parody rides behind despair, and seeming is opposed to being—had never found more terrible expression. Never had a light more sinister illumined the depths of human darkness. ”

“ That's because, when one's heart has been broken into in the way you have broken into mine, all sorts of weaknesses are free to enter—shame, anger, stupid indignation, stupid fears—stupid laughter, too. ”

“ What is much worse, even those bits of wanton color which have rested generations of weary eyes are being rapidly obscured by sombre and intricate scroll-work, warranted to oppress and fatigue. The great masterpieces of humor, which have kept men young by laughter, are being tried in the courts of an orthodox morality, and found lamentably wanting ”

“ It is a tragedy or a comedy—sad or merry, as it happens. The crimes and misfortunes that are inseparable from it, shock and wound the mind when they once seize upon it, and when the pressure can no longer be borne, seek relief in tears: the follies and absurdities that men commit, or the odd accidents that befal them, afford us amusement from the very rejection of these false claims upon our sympathy, and end in laughter. ”

“ Every Man out of his Humour.The fervour and intensity of the verse which expresses his loftier mood of intolerant indignation, the studious and implacable versatility of scorn which animates the expression of his disgust at the viler or crueller examples of social villainy then open to his contemptuous or furious observation, though they certainly cannot suffice to make a play, suffice to make a living and imperishable work of the dramatic satire which passes so rapidly from one phase to another of folly, fraud, or vice. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The constant illusions; the many disappointments; the bitter earnestness of the man amid the grim humour, or more often sheer cacchination of his surroundings; all the bestial mockery of the baffling fiends; the still more hideous mockery in which the Powers of Good themselves seem to indulge; doubt of the reality of that which he seeks; doubt even of the seeker; the irony of the whole strife: are fascinating to me as they are, I make no doubt, to the majority of mankind. ”

“ Dressed in loveliness and laughter, there is mortal decay at thy heart: sorrow, sin, and shame have mingled thy cup of misery. Strange rulers have bruised thee, and laughed thee to scorn, and they have made all thy sweetness bitter. ”

“ Everything about my tragedy has been hideous, mean, repellent, lacking in style; our very dress makes us grotesque. We are the zanies of sorrow. We are clowns whose hearts are broken. We are specially designed to appeal to the sense of humour. ”

“ While tears lie and cheat by aping heavenly feelings, laughter is awkwardly trying to let the craziness of evil demons skulk behind it, hides itself from vulgarity for the sake of being seen, feigns terrour when our unsubdued struggling feelings are detected, and saunters about in the midst of whatever is disgusting and impure, perpetually clapperclawing with some outcast among the rabble or other: one moment our intelligent, and higher faculties, as they call them, get the upper hand ”

“ But I did feel that if at that moment any of those faults had been brought before me which sometimes occur among us; had I heard that any of you had been guilty of falsehood, or of drunkenness, or of any other such sin; had I heard from any quarter the language of profaneness, or of unkindness, or of indecency; had I heard or seen any signs of that wretched folly which courts the laugh of fools by affecting not to dread evil and not to care for good, then the unsuitableness of any of these things with the scene I had just quitted would indeed have been most intensely painful. And why? ”

“ For humor distorts nothing, and only false gods are laughed off their earthly pedestals. What monstrous absurdities and paradoxes have resisted whole batteries of serious arguments, and then crumbled swiftly into dust before the ringing death-knell of a laugh! ”

“ It is one of those instances of the irony inherent in human fate which move at once to tears and bitter laughter; the waste of emotion, the involuntary folly, the cruel deception caused by limit of faculties—how they concentrate into an hour or a day the essence of life itself! ”

“ Those who eagerly crowded around to gaze at this grim exemplification of the covert sarcasm and irony which dwells in every human breast, nearly died with laughter at the sepulchral immobility of the sneering smile. ”

“ It is also true that laughter quiets our uneasy scruples and disposes us to simple savagery. Whatever we laugh at, we condone, and the echo of man’s malicious merriment rings pitilessly through the centuries. Humour which has no scorn, wit which has no sting, jests which have no victim, these are not the pleasantries which have provoked mirth, or fed the comic sense of a conventionalized rather than a civilized world. ”

“ He spoke as men do in fevers. I could see that there were some about us who set him down as mad. There were those who jeered, as fools will at the sight of a man's anguish, when, in the abandonment of his shame, he trails his soul in the dust. ”

“ If sentimentalists were gifted with a sense of humor it would have occurred to them how ludicrous and illogical it is to suppose that savages and barbarians, the world over, should in each instance have been converted by a few whites from angels to monsters of depravity with such amazing suddenness. ”

“ Laugh, though the world upon you frown,
Laugh, though the deeps your soul shall drown,
Many a better man goes down—
Throw back your head and laugh.
And when Death's hand on your shoulder lies
And the world grows dim to your failing eyes,
Let him not say: "A coward dies."
Throw back your head and laugh.
EASTER, 1917
I. M. Thomas MacDonagh
He died for thee, O mournful Mother Erin! ”

“ We know not of what substance to name them. Humour in its intense strain has a seat somewhere about the mouth of tragedy, giving it the enigmatical faint wry pull at a corner visible at times upon the dreadful mask. ”

“ Humour, in the Representation of the Foibles of Persons in real Life, frequently exhibits very generous benevolent Sentiments of Heart; And these, tho' exerted in a particular odd Manner, justly command our Fondness and Love.--Whereas in the Allusions of Wit, Severity, Bitterness, and Satire, are frequently exhibited.--And where these are avoided, E 25 not worthy amiable Sentiments of the Heart, but quick unexpected Efforts of the Fancy, are presented. ”

“ But, after looking a while at the long-tailed imp, he was so shocked by his horrible ugliness, spiritual as well as physical, that he actually began to shed tears; a weakness which men of merely delicate endowments, and destitute of the fiercer, deeper, and more tragic power of laughter, can hardly avoid, when the worst and meanest aspect of life happens to be presented to them. ”

“ Humour is the whimsical Oddity, or Foible, which fairly appears in its Subject, of itself; whereas Wit, is the Lustre which is thrown upon one Subject, by the sudden Introduction of another Subject.
To constitute Humour, there need be no more than one Object concern'd, and this must be always some Person in real Life;--whereas to produce Wit, there must be always two Objects arranged together, and either or both of these may be inanimate. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Now to smile at it, and turn it into ridicule," he adds, "I think most eligible, as it hurts ourselves least, and gives vice and folly the greatest offence. Laughing at the misconduct of the world, will, in a great measure, ease us of any more disagreeable passion about it. ”

“ But there is, in truth, as little of affected as of actual madness in his behaviour in her presence. When he comes before her pale and trembling, speechless and with staring eyes, it is with no simulated insanity, but in the agonized hope, scarce distinguishable from despair, of finding, in the testimony of her visible presence, an assurance that the doubts ever tearing his spirit and sickening his brain, are but the offspring of his phantasy. ”

“ So that take melancholy in what sense you will, properly or improperly, in disposition or habit, for pleasure or for pain, dotage, discontent, fear, sorrow, madness, for part, or all, truly, or metaphorically, 'tis all one. Laughter itself is madness according to Solomon, and as St. Paul hath it, “Worldly sorrow brings death.” “The hearts of the sons of men are evil, and madness is in their hearts while they live,” Eccl. ix. 3. “Wise men themselves are no better.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ Her soul had been so utterly surprised and terrified in the outer world that this infantile parody was curiously welcome, since nothing keeps the mind in balance on the tight-rope of sanity like the counterweight that comedy furnishes to tragedy, farce to frenzy, and puerility to solemnity. ”

“ Further, when we remember his fine imaginative powers, his inimitable humour, his vanity, his poetic cast of mind, his bitterness against the public for not appreciating his musical talents, and his consequent fits of fierce defiance and satiric gloom, there is still less cause for wonder when we find this propensity for seeking the uncommon and the marvellous deepening and developing in time into an unconquerable penchant for what was grotesque and eccentric, for what was fantastic, unnatural, ghostly, and horrible. ”

“ I have a horror of being duped, above all, duped by myself, and I would rather cut myself off from all life’s joys than deceive or be deceived. Humiliation, then, is the sorrow which I fear the most, and therefore it would seem as if pride were the deepest rooted of my faults. ”

“ 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. ”