Wisdom Jokes Quotes

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It seems to me that the good lord in his infinate wisdom gave us three things to make life bearable- hope, jokes, and dogs. But the greatest of these was dogs.
Robyn Davidson (Tracks: A Woman's Solo Trek Across 1700 Miles of Australian Outback)
For the advice in a joke is sometimes more useful than the most serious teaching.
Baltasar Gracián (The Art of Worldly Wisdom)
There are times when a feeling of expectancy comes to me, as if something is there, beneath the surface of my understanding, waiting for me to grasp it. It is the same tantalizing sensation when you almost remember a name, but don't quite reach it. I can feel it when I think of human beings, of the hints of evolution suggested by the removal of wisdom teeth, the narrowing of the jaw no longer needed to chew such roughage as it was accustomed to; the gradual disappearance of hair from the human body; the adjustment of the human eye to the fine print, the swift, colored motion of the twentieth century. The feeling comes, vague and nebulous, when I consider the prolonged adolesence of our species; the rites of birth, marriage and death; all the primitive, barbaric ceremonies streamlined to modern times. Almost, I think, the unreasoning, bestial purity was best. Oh, something is there, waiting for me. Perhaps someday the revelation will burst in upon me and I will see the other side of this monumental grotesque joke. And then I'll laugh. And then I'll know what life is.
Sylvia Plath (The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath)
Be careful not to appear obsessively intellectual. When intelligence fills up, it overflows a parody.
Criss Jami (Healology)
-We need more love, to supersede hatred, -We need more strength, to resist our weaknesses, -We need more inspiration, to lighten up our innermind. -We need more learning, to erase our ignorance, -We need more wisdom, to live longer and happier, -We need more truths, to suppress deceptions, -We need more health, to enjoy our wealth, -We need more peace, to stay in harmony with our brethren -We need more smiles, to brighten up our day, -We need more hero's, and not zero's, -We need more change of ourselves, to change the lives of others, -We need more understanding, to tackle our misunderstanding, -We need more sympathy, not apathy, -We need more forgiveness, not vengeance, -We need more humility to be lifted up, -We need more patience and not undue eagerness, -We need more focus, to avoid distraction, -We need more optimism, not pessimism -We need more justice, not injustice, -We need more facts, not fiction, -We need more education, to curb illiteracy, -We need more skills, not incompetence, -We need more challenges, to make attempts, -We need more talents, to create the extraordinary, -We need more helping hands, not stingy folks, -We need more efforts, not laziness, -We need more jokes, to forget our worries, -We need more spirituality, not mean religion, -We need more freedom, not enslavement, -We need more peacemakers, not revolutionaries...with these, we create an heaven on earth.
Michael Bassey Johnson
Butterflies are beautiful, but the process of emerging from the chrysalis and spreading your wings can hurt like fucking hell. But still, you will survive the transformation (over and over again) and you will fly. Remember this when it hurts the most. This is the metamorphosis, the going down to liquid, and the rising again. It’s no joke – but damn, it’s one hell of a journey.
Jeanette LeBlanc
And it occurred to her that reading was, among other things, a muscle and one that she had seemingly developed. She could read the novel with ease and great pleasure, laughing at remarks, they were hardly jokes, that she had not even noticed before.
Alan Bennett (The Uncommon Reader)
An assumption is the joke; truth the punchline.
Criss Jami (Killosophy)
I Take Life Very Seriously: One Joke At A Time.
Sandra Chami Kassis
It is usually unbearably painful to read a book by an author who knows way less than you do, unless the book is a novel.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
I remember joking with my friend in high school, “Can you think about not thinking?” We noticed that the mind never stops and we noticed that you really can't think about not thinking. In fact, we couldn’t “not think” at all. And that was a question that plagued me for a long time. There's a greater wisdom that comes when we're not clouded in thought, when we're not lost in thought, when we're addressing exactly what's happening and not some mentally constructed simulation of what's actually happening.
Todd Perelmuter (Spiritual Words to Live by : 81 Daily Wisdoms and Meditations to Transform Your Life)
Thor might be god of strength and war, Odin of wisdom, but he sometimes wondered if it wasn’t Loki, the trickster god, who stood behind what unfolded. A lie can run deeper than strength or wisdom. And hadn’t the world proved to be a bitter joke?
Mark Lawrence (The Liar's Key (The Red Queen's War, #2))
I often took him as one of God's little jokes on me. When I was in desperate trouble, what saved me from a fate worse than death? To what do I owe my life? Was it love, affection, understanding, friends, wisdom? No no no. It was a man who looks like a poor copy of Walt Disney, drives pink Cadillacs, wears baby-blue alligator shoes, and appears to have the emotional depth of a slightly retarded potato.
Mark Vonnegut (The Eden Express: A Memoir of Insanity)
Jokes and folklore and poetic metaphor, the wisdom of folly, tell the secret truth.
Norman O. Brown (Life Against Death: The Psychoanalytical Meaning of History)
There is no better taste than this: someone else's laughter in your mouth.
Maggie Stiefvater (Forever (The Wolves of Mercy Falls, #3))
Elsewhere there are no mobile phones. Elsewhere sleep is deep and the mornings are wonderful. Elsewhere art is endless, exhibitions are free and galleries are open twenty-four hours a day. Elsewhere alcohol is a joke that everybody finds funny. Elsewhere everybody is as welcoming as they’d be if you’d come home after a very long time away and they’d really missed you. Elsewhere nobody stops you in the street and says, are you a Catholic or a Protestant, and when you say neither, I’m a Muslim, then says yeah but are you a Catholic Muslim or a Protestant Muslim? Elsewhere there are no religions. Elsewhere there are no borders. Elsewhere nobody is a refugee or an asylum seeker whose worth can be decided about by a government. Elsewhere nobody is something to be decided about by anybody. Elsewhere there are no preconceptions. Elsewhere all wrongs are righted. Elsewhere the supermarkets don’t own us. Elsewhere we use our hands for cups and the rivers are clean and drinkable. Elsewhere the words of the politicians are nourishing to the heart. Elsewhere charlatans are known for their wisdom. Elsewhere history has been kind. Elsewhere nobody would ever say the words bring back the death penalty. Elsewhere the graves of the dead are empty and their spirits fly above the cities in instinctual, shapeshifting formations that astound the eye. Elsewhere poems cancel imprisonment. Elsewhere we do time differently. Every time I travel, I head for it. Every time I come home, I look for it.
Ali Smith (Public Library and Other Stories)
I love capturing memories. Emotion that’s usually fleeting being frozen forever in time. The wisdom in the gaze of a person who’s lived a full life. The look in someone’s eyes when they realize they’re in love. The joy in their face when they’re laughing at a joke. Photographs help us remember things we’d otherwise forget.
Emily McIntire (Twisted (Never After, #4))
Life is a mighty joke that is not meant to be funny.
Janvier Chouteu-Chando (Disciples of Fortune)
Забелязвам, че колкото по-здраво работя, толкова по-голям късмет имам.
Mark Twain
It is better to doubt that a concept is stupidly flying under your head than profoundly flying over your head.
Criss Jami (Killosophy)
For us lads of eighteen they ought to have been mediators and guides to the world of maturity, the world of work, of duty, of culture, of progress--to the future. We often made fun of them and played jokes on them, but in our hearts we trusted them. The idea of authority, which they represented, was associated in our minds with a greater insight and a more humane wisdom. But the first death we saw shattered this belief.
Erich Maria Remarque (All Quiet on the Western Front)
That room - once you enter it, you never really leave. You can forget you're there, you can go on as if you hold the reins, that the course of your life, yeah even its length, will reflect the force of your character and the wisdom of your judgments. And then you hit an icy path on a turn one sunny March day and the wheel in your hands becomes a joke and you no more than a spectator to your own dreamy slide toward the verge, and then you remember where you are.
Tobias Wolff (Our Story Begins: New and Selected Stories)
It’s like returning to a familiar room and noticing objects had been moved while you were gone—a chair here, a picture frame there. Items that were once brand new were suddenly broken in and worn from age. It was all very subtle, but enough to suspect paranormal activity or a cruel practical joke. When no one else saw what you saw, the freak factor really kicked in, because you were singled out and left questioning reality." ~Ellia
Jaime Reed (Keep Me In Mind)
We seek the punchline in a joke, moral in a story, summary in an essay, fragrance in a flower and so on. We seek essence in each and every thing . Why don't we seek essence of the universe as a whole? That essence is nothingness.
Shunya
Of course, it was a lie, and that bald man in a blue suit was definitely harassing her, teasing her with dirty, rude jokes. Nothing physical from the body of a High Grade can heal. No matter if it’s blood or sperm or saliva or even a discarded hair or nail—as some fraudulent religious groups claim, taking advantage of Low Grades’ fascination with the living gods among them. Though, the archive mentions a however as a footnote: ***However, when they pass strong prana (the energy controllable by the evolved, High Grade humans) to the sick or wounded, it heals, no matter whether they are plants or animals. Their prana flows strongly when they feel strong emotions. Some people say their sperm heals, but it’s not the semen. It’s the strong prana-boosts the High Grades experience when they reach climax during intimacy … Kusha felt a tinge of pride, exponentially multiplied by her Low-Grade inferiority complex, reading this footnote.
Misba (The Oldest Dance (Wisdom Revolution, #2))
All life was weather, a waiting through the hot where events had no significance for the cool that was soft and caressing like a woman's hand on a tired forehead. Down in Georgia there is a feeling—perhaps inarticulate—that this is the greatest wisdom of the South—so after a while the Jelly-bean turned into a poolhall on Jackson Street where he was sure to find a congenial crowd who would make all the old jokes—the ones he knew.
F. Scott Fitzgerald
As a private joke, he and Ruem recreated their master’s voice, installing it in Pico’s AI three decades ago. Now their own master’s voice—the master who trained them both—says Ruem isn’t a human. “You’re judging humans. One of your creators, no less,” Yuan says, half-informing, half-praising. “I’m repeating what Ren said.” “Stay here,” the Monk says, leaving Pico near the waterfall. “Are you angry because I said Ruem is not a human?” Pico asks.
Misba (The High Auction (Wisdom Revolution, #1))
When a comedy of Plautus is being played, and the household slaves are cracking trivial jokes together, ou propose to come on stage in the garb of a philosopher, and repeat Seneca's speech to Nero from the Octavia. Wouldn't it be better to take a silent role than to say something wholly inappropriate, and thus turn the play into a tragi-comedy? You pervert a play and ruin it when you add irrelevant speeches, even if they are better than the play itself. So go through with the drama in hand as best you can, and don't spoil it all just because you happen to think of another that would be better.
Thomas More (Utopia)
My friends tell me I am strong, decisive, and wise. What a joke. Where is my strength tonight? Where is my wisdom? Ironically, they tell me I am ‘so open’. Me, who has so many secrets that I have never shared. The irony would be funny if it wasn't so sad. Their blindness to my true self makes me feel invisible. Not in the way that a spirit or ghost is invisible, for I am most definitely flesh, blood, sinew, and bone. I even have a mind that works nimble and fast, and a mouth that speaks reasonably eloquently, when I feel I have something worthwhile to say. No, I’m invisible because the people who populate my life either do not, or cannot, see the real me. Of course, that is but another irony. I know much of my invisibility is of my own doing, and that is the last joke on myself: that which I seek is also that which I fear.
Lily Velden
Hooting and hollering, the crowd reliably responded as if that were the height of humor, while Herman slapped me on the back and nearly fell off his gunnysack seat guffawing and I laughed as hard as if I hadn’t heard that mossy joke at every rodeo I had ever been to. Life can tickle you in the ribs surprisingly when it’s not digging its thumb in.
Ivan Doig (Last Bus to Wisdom)
For us lads of eighteen they ought to have been mediators and guides to the world of maturity, the world of work, of duty, of culture, of progress - to the future. We often made fun of them and played jokes on them, but in our hearts we trusted them. The idea of authority, which they represented, was associated in our minds with a greater insight and a more humane wisdom. But the first death we saw shattered this belief. We had to recognize that our generation was more to be trusted than theirs. They surpassed us only in phrases and in cleverness. The first bombardment showed us our mistake, and under it the world as they had taught it to us broke in pieces. While they continued to write and talk, we saw the wounded and dying. While they taught that duty to one's country is the greatest thing, we already knew that death-throes are stronger. But for all that we were no mutineers, no deserters, no cowards - they were very free with all these expressions. We loved our country as much as they; we went courageously into every action; but also we distinguished the false from true, we had suddenly learned to see. And we saw that there was nothing of their world left. We were all at once terribly alone; and alone we must see it through.
Erich Maria Remarque (All Quiet on the Western Front)
Little people make tall claims. As being this-that avatar or messiah. Some even say they're God. Well, if they are, I'm their grand-pop.
Fakeer Ishavardas
the good Lord in his infinite wisdom gave us three things to make life bearable – hope, jokes and dogs, but the greatest of these was dogs.
Robyn Davidson (Tracks)
I'm not joking you. I never joke people. Joke people and you make enemies. That's what I always say.
Ernest Hemingway (HEMINGWAY PREMIUM 7-BOOK COLLECTION The Old Man And The Sea,A Farewell To Arms,For Whom The Bell Tolls,The Sun Also Rises,Across The River And Into The ... Afternoon (Timeless Wisdom Collection 1021))
The writer Anne Lamott jokes in Bird by Bird , “Ever wonder what God thinks of money? Just look at the people he gives it to.
Ryan Holiday (The Daily Stoic: 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living)
Some people have no humor, because they know every joke at another's expense is born from a truth that causes pain. - The Malwatch
Scaylen Renvac
We are told that man is the smartest of the animals, and of course it's true. But what's the competition? A buffalo? A turkey? A big slippery tuna? C'mon, that's what you're proud of? Wow?
Christopher Volkay
Dear good guy I can hear your cries I can feel your pain I can smell your frustration I can see the confusion in your eyes Confused about how women see you In a land of women tired of being played They still take you as a joke and think you’re all games They play you like they were played They can’t see the seriousness in your eyes When you call her “Queen” and ask for her heart And you cry for commitment, they back out and shut down Treat you like the bad guys treated them It’s so ironic You hate seeing these ladies get their hearts stomped on Their minds toyed with It’s killing you because you’ve done it to women yourself you’ve seen other guys do it You want to save them from the destruction But like a child who refuses to obey their mother’s wisdom, until they are wise enough to understand through experience They won’t value you until they get burned playing with the fire of curiosity Some of them crave destruction They crave the fun that these fellas who will degrade them have to offer They are being guided by curiosity and their wisdom is foolishness Fight the urge to become like the men these ladies who lack understanding chase after Don’t let rejection consume your heart and cause you to crumble Being a promiscuous man who lacks self-respect and morals is overrated Find peace with being the underdog Your type is needed in this world, my good friend Hold on There are women out there who are in search for someone like you One of them will be the one who appreciates the detailed things about you the previous women called corny There are women out there who will value your honesty, your character, your loyalty Hold on, my friend Narrow is the right path You are on the right path, my friend Your time will come in due time You will not just be getting a girl, you will be getting a woman who will be willing to finish off this life’s journey with you You are not alone I am with you and I understand the hardships you face, the doubt, the anger I want you to know you are doing a great job at being you Do not give up Stand firm and continue to be different You will be an example to many although you are in the minority Corruption
Pierre Alex Jeanty (Unspoken Feelings of a Gentleman)
There is a special pleasure in the irony of a moralist brought down for the very moral failings he has condemned. It’s the pleasure of a well-told joke. Some jokes are funny as one-liners, but most require three verses: three guys, say, who walk into a bar one at a time, or a priest, a minister, and a rabbi in a lifeboat. The first two set the pattern, and the third violates it. With hypocrisy, the hypocrite’s preaching is the setup, the hypocritical action is the punch line. Scandal is great entertainment because it allows people to feel contempt, a moral emotion that gives feelings of moral superiority while asking nothing in return. With contempt you don’t need to right the wrong (as with anger) or flee the scene (as with fear or disgust). And best of all, contempt is made to share. Stories about the moral failings of others are among the most common kinds of gossip,3 they are a staple of talk radio, and they offer a ready way for people to show that they share a common moral orientation. Tell an acquaintance a cynical story that ends with both of you smirking and shaking your heads and voila, you’ve got a bond.
Jonathan Haidt (The Happiness Hypothesis: Putting Ancient Wisdom to the Test of Modern Science)
Everything in Scripture has the force of law. What it teaches we are to believe; what it commands, we are to do. We should take its wisdom to heart, imitate its heroes, laugh at its jokes, trust its promises, and sing its songs.
John M. Frame
Of course, it was a lie, and that bald man in a blue suit was definitely harassing her, teasing her with dirty, rude jokes. Nothing physical from the body of a High Grade can heal. No matter if it’s blood or sperm or saliva or even a discarded hair or nail—as some fraudulent religious groups claim, taking advantage of Low Grades’ fascination with the living gods among them. Though, the archive mentions a however as a footnote: ***However, when they pass strong prana (the energy controllable by the evolved, High Grade humans) to the sick or wounded, it heals, no matter whether they are plants or animals. Their prana flows strongly when they feel strong emotions. Some people say their sperm heals, but it’s not the semen. It’s the strong prana-boosts the High Grades experience when they reach climax during intimacy … Kusha felt a tinge of pride, exponentially multiplied by her Low-Grade inferiority complex, reading this footnote. It worsened when ads started coming up on her HOME page after reading it. The ads had horrible titles: Dream Youth For The Low Grades. Alternate Longevity. A Secret Pleasurable Way To Youth. Get Your Dream Citizenship With Pleasing Pleasure Contract. The last one is for non-citizens, of course. At least, she’s a citizen. But when Kusha discovered how many unevolved men and women enter such contracts just for citizenship, it made her face crease. As if she’d caught a nasty smell. For a moment, she even thought, she hated every High Grade in the world, including everyone in her adoptive family. Right now, standing in front of Meera, the hatred swells.
Misba (The Oldest Dance (Wisdom Revolution, #2))
Buffett and Munger joke that envy is the only one of the seven deadly sins that isn’t any fun. “Envy is crazy,” remarks Munger. “It’s 100 percent destructive. . . . If you get those things out of your life early, life works a lot better.
Guy Spier (The Education of a Value Investor: My Transformative Quest for Wealth, Wisdom, and Enlightenment)
So we grew up with mythic dead To spoon upon midwestern bread And spread old gods' bright marmalade To slake in peanut-butter shade, Pretending there beneath our sky That it was Aphrodite's thigh... While by the porch-rail calm and bold His words pure wisdom, stare pure gold My grandfather, a myth indeed, Did all of Plato supersede While Grandmama in rockingchair Sewed up the raveled sleeve of care Crocheted cool snowflakes rare and bright To winter us on summer night. And uncles, gathered with their smokes Emitted wisdoms masked as jokes, And aunts as wise as Delphic maids Dispensed prothetic lemonades To boys knelt there as acolytes To Grecian porch on summer nights; Then went to bed, there to repent The evils of the innocent; The gnat-sins sizzling in their ears Said, through the nights and through the years Not Illinois nor Waukegan But blither sky and blither sun. Though mediocre all our Fates And Mayor not as bright as Yeats Yet still we knew ourselves. The sum? Byzantium. Byzantium.
Ray Bradbury (Dandelion Wine)
At the same time, if we were feeling a knot of guilt about our decision re: dying, it might have been because we regretted our failure to achieve a certain kind of wisdom born from certain kinds of life experiences...Our skittishness when it came to any crisis, the preference we had for deflecting important conversations with jokes, rather than facing them head-on. It was fine, we agreed, not to want to grow old. Fine, too, to take steps to ensure we didn't grow old. But we'd also avoided growing up. We'd lived our lives like perpetual children, hiding in corners, never knowing what to say, never knowing what to do. If our plan to die was problematic, it was problematic in that it eliminated the possibility of our ever becoming serious, capable women.
Judith Claire Mitchell (A Reunion of Ghosts)
Social smile. Research shows that we laugh more often when we’re in the company of other people rather than when we are alone. Robert Provine says that only 15% of our laughter comes from the amusement of jokes! There is wisdom to that—so many times I barely smiled when reading a joke alone at home, but when I heard the same joke while with a group of people, I cried out loud with unstoppable laughter. It turns out that laughter has an important social function; it’s the way to forge relationships. Conclusions?
Ian Tuhovsky (Communication Skills Training: A Practical Guide to Improving Your Social Intelligence, Presentation, Persuasion and Public Speaking)
I got this cousin, Lamar,' he said. 'Total fool. And by fool I mean motherfucker wouldn't find water in a swimming pool. But, like all fools, he once spoke a sentence of true wisdom. We'd been talking about this brother, who had a certain . . . fondness for the kind of place you and I find ourselves in right now, and Lamar, in the midst of all his usual ignorant bullshit, said, "You got to be wary of a man who spends all his time watching titties bounce."' Floyd threw his head back and laughed. 'Shit still gets me.
Philip Elliott (Nobody Move (Angel City #1))
Jim Thunder, at seventy-five the youngest of the speakers, is a round brown man of serious demeanor who spoke only in Potawatomi. He began solemnly, but as he warmed to his subject his voice lifted like a breeze in the birch trees and his hands began to tell the story. He became more and more animated, rising to his feet, holding us rapt and silent although almost no one understood a single word. He paused as if reaching the climax of his story and looked out at the audience with a twinkle of expectation. One of the grandmothers behind him covered her mouth in a giggle and his stern face suddenly broke into a smile as big and sweet as a cracked watermelon. He bent over laughing and the grandmas dabbed away tears of laughter, holding their sides, while the rest of us looked on in wonderment. When the laughter subsided, he spoke at last in English: "What will happen to a joke if no one will hear it any more? How lonely those words will be, when their is power gone. Where will they go? Off to join the stories that can never be told again.
Robin Wall Kimmerer (Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants)
Charlie Chaplin told the same joke 3 times I/laughter 2/giggle 3/silence Then he told these beautiful lines; ”when you cannot laugh at the same joke again and again…then why do you cry again and again on the same worry” Enjoy each moment, as time passes in the blink of an eye!
Michael Levy (That's Rich: Connect The Dots)
They taught the women that the home is a shame and in doing so, they successfully decomposed nations. Instead of it being the greatest honour to build a family, it became a laughingstock. And in this becoming, they successfully deconstructed nations. They taught the men that loyalty is merely an option and in doing so, they successfully destroyed nations. Instead of it being the greatest pride to love one woman, it became a joke, a funny side comment. And in this becoming, they successfully poisoned nations. Your home is your atom, your cell, your genome. Your love is your honour, your word, your truth. You wonder why we live in deconstructed nations, you ask one another why you live on torn fibres, cracked ground, and yet you continue to listen to what they tell you. You have put shame where there should be a throne, you have placed a joke where there should be a crown. You have successfully destroyed your nations.
C. JoyBell C.
Many readers are familiar with the spirit and the letter of the definition of “prayer”, as given by Ambrose Bierce in his Devil’s Dictionary. It runs like this, and is extremely easy to comprehend: Prayer: A petition that the laws of nature be suspended in favor of the petitioner; himself confessedly unworthy. Everybody can see the joke that is lodged within this entry: The man who prays is the one who thinks that god has arranged matters all wrong, but who also thinks that he can instruct god how to put them right. Half–buried in the contradiction is the distressing idea that nobody is in charge, or nobody with any moral authority. The call to prayer is self–cancelling. Those of us who don’t take part in it will justify our abstention on the grounds that we do not need, or care, to undergo the futile process of continuous reinforcement. Either our convictions are enough in themselves or they are not: At any rate they do require standing in a crowd and uttering constant and uniform incantations. This is ordered by one religion to take place five times a day, and by other monotheists for almost that number, while all of them set aside at least one whole day for the exclusive praise of the Lord, and Judaism seems to consist in its original constitution of a huge list of prohibitions that must be followed before all else. The tone of the prayers replicates the silliness of the mandate, in that god is enjoined or thanked to do what he was going to do anyway. Thus the Jewish male begins each day by thanking god for not making him into a woman (or a Gentile), while the Jewish woman contents herself with thanking the almighty for creating her “as she is.” Presumably the almighty is pleased to receive this tribute to his power and the approval of those he created. It’s just that, if he is truly almighty, the achievement would seem rather a slight one. Much the same applies to the idea that prayer, instead of making Christianity look foolish, makes it appear convincing. Now, it can be asserted with some confidence, first, that its deity is all–wise and all–powerful and, second, that its congregants stand in desperate need of that deity’s infinite wisdom and power. Just to give some elementary quotations, it is stated in the book of Philippians, 4:6, “Be careful for nothing; but in everything by prayer and supplication and thanksgiving, let your requests be known to God.” Deuteronomy 32:4 proclaims that “he is the rock, his work is perfect,” and Isaiah 64:8 tells us, “Now O Lord, thou art our father; we art clay and thou our potter; and we are all the work of thy hand.” Note, then, that Christianity insists on the absolute dependence of its flock, and then only on the offering of undiluted praise and thanks. A person using prayer time to ask for the world to be set to rights, or to beseech god to bestow a favor upon himself, would in effect be guilty of a profound blasphemy or, at the very least, a pathetic misunderstanding. It is not for the mere human to be presuming that he or she can advise the divine. And this, sad to say, opens religion to the additional charge of corruption. The leaders of the church know perfectly well that prayer is not intended to gratify the devout. So that, every time they accept a donation in return for some petition, they are accepting a gross negation of their faith: a faith that depends on the passive acceptance of the devout and not on their making demands for betterment. Eventually, and after a bitter and schismatic quarrel, practices like the notorious “sale of indulgences” were abandoned. But many a fine basilica or chantry would not be standing today if this awful violation had not turned such a spectacularly good profit. And today it is easy enough to see, at the revival meetings of Protestant fundamentalists, the counting of the checks and bills before the laying on of hands by the preacher has even been completed. Again, the spectacle is a shameless one.
Christopher Hitchens (Mortality)
What a joke, Simon, life is. “From vanity we buy lenses that see all and so lose everything! “And by giving up some small bit-piece of so-called wisdom, reality, truth, we gain back an entirety of life! Who does not know this? Writers do! Intuited novels are far more ‘true’ than all your scribbled data-fact reportage in the history of the world!
Ray Bradbury (I Sing the Body Electric! and Other Stories)
For us lads of eighteen they ought to have been mediators and guides to the world of maturity, the world of work, of duty, of culture, of progress—to the future. We often made fun of them and played jokes on them, but in our hearts we trusted them. The idea of authority, which they represented, was associated in our minds with a greater insight and a more humane wisdom.
Erich Maria Remarque (All Quiet on the Western Front)
We often made fun of them and played jokes on them, but in our hearts we trusted them. The idea of authority, which they represented, was associated in our minds with a greater insight and a more humane wisdom. But the first death we saw shattered this belief. We had to recognize that our generation was more to be trusted than theirs. They surpassed us only in phrases and in cleverness.
Erich Maria Remarque (All Quiet on the Western Front)
Thus Christianity becomes a story of accumulated human experience of God that reveals a certain kind of wisdom in the world: To love God and love one’s neighbor constitutes the good life. Love is, as the apostle Paul wrote, the greatest of all things. Without love we are, as the good apostle said flatly, “nothing” (1 Cor. 13). Without love, Christianity is either a pretty bad joke or a twisted political agenda.
Diana Butler Bass (A People's History of Christianity: The Other Side of the Story)
How could it be, she wondered. How could it be that the simple act of having a child did this to you? Had every birth in the world ruined every woman in the world? Was this a secret they’d been keeping, or had she just not been listening? Underneath all the vacuous, cruel wisdom the women who saw her in her late stages of pregnancy imparted to her, most of which had to do with banking sleep or measuring every precious moment because it all goes so fast, were they really telling her to mark her personhood? The other women in her prenatal yoga class had kept up an email chain, and in their messages, she tried to discern that they, too, were terrified and violated and sad and broken, but they weren’t. Trust her, they just weren’t. They made jokes about how they were tired and it was a tragedy that one of them had had an epidural and it was a tragedy that one of them couldn’t produce enough milk for her baby and had to supplement with formula. She wanted to write back to tell them she couldn’t look in the mirror at herself. She wanted someone to understand how small she was now. She wanted to ask one of them if this was the real her—if the real her had been revealed to her suddenly that day in the hospital, or if she would somehow bounce back. Bouncing back was a language they understood: their vaginas needed to bounce back, their breasts needed to bounce back, would their abdomens ever bounce back. With a few small adjustments, these women would acclimate to life. They would recognize themselves. But would Rachel? Would Rachel bounce back? The entire phrase “bouncing back” seemed to her like it existed to make fun of her. There was no bouncing. There was no back.
Taffy Brodesser-Akner (Fleishman Is in Trouble)
People want to share but they usually don’t.
People don’t talk to each other about real things because they’re afraid of how they’ll be judged. Or they think other people don’t have the capacity to carry the burden of what they have to say. They see the compulsion to put that burden out in the world as a show of weakness. But all that stuff is what makes us human; more than that, it’s what makes being human interesting and funny. How we got away from that, I don’t know. But fuck that: We’re built to deal with shit. We’re built to deal with death, disease, failure, struggle, heartbreak, problems. It’s what separates us from the animals and why we envy and love animals so much. We’re aware of it all and have to process it. The way we each handle being human is where all the good stories, jokes, art, wisdom, revelations, and bullshit come from.
Marc Maron (Attempting Normal)
AS I EXPECTED, I was treated by Scipio's conquerors as a harmless old fool with wisdom. The criminals called me "The Preacher" or "The Professor," just as they had on the other side. I saw that many of them had tied ribbons around their upper arms as a sort of uniform. So when I came across a man who wasn't wearing a ribbon, I asked him jokingly, "Where's your uniform, Soldier?" "Preacher," he said, referring to his skin, "I was born in a uniform.
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (Hocus Pocus)
That room—once you enter it, you never really leave. You can forget you’re there, you can go on as if you hold the reins, that the course of your life, yea even its length, will reflect the force of your character and the wisdom of your judgments. And then you hit an icy patch on a turn one sunny March day and the wheel in your hands becomes a joke and you no more than a spectator to your own dreamy slide toward the verge, and then you remember where you are.
Tobias Wolff (Our Story Begins: New and Selected Stories)
Vera spent about two hours one afternoon trying to make me appreciate the elegance of Lovelace’s procedure for calculating Bernoulli numbers. I pleaded with her, telling her, only half jokingly, that her explanation was wasted on an arts graduate. She looked thunderous. I had hit some intellectual sore point. “Don’t be proud of this false specialization that is killing wisdom,” she said. “There is no natural distinction between the arts and sciences.” “Well, one deals in facts,” I said. “The other doesn’t.” “So history is an art or a science?” she countered. Before I could reply, she added, “Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky have also discovered the laws of nature.” “They were novelists, Vera. By definition, they made things up.” “You are so limited! Bill Gates also makes things up. Is he a novelist? Science, it’s a process of creation too. Literature itself is a species of code. You line up symbols and create a simulacrum of life.
Marcel Theroux (Strange Bodies: A Novel)
It is the sheer weight of the robot that makes us feel we are living in a ‘wooden world’. We can see for example that the moment Ouspensky or Ward returned from the mystical realm of perfect freedom and found themselves ‘back in the body’ they once again found themselves saddled with all their boring old habits and worries and neuroses, all their old sense of identity built up from the reactions of other people, and above all the dreary old heaviness, as if consciousness has turned into a leaden weight. This is the sensation that made the romantics feel that life is a kind of hell — or at the very least, purgatory. Yet we know enough about the robot to know that this feeling is as untrustworthy as the depression induced by a hangover. The trouble with living ‘on the robot’ is that he is a dead weight. He takes over only when our energies are low. So when I do something robotically I get no feedback of sudden delight. This in turn makes me feel that it was not worth doing. ‘Stan’ reacts by failing to send up energy and ‘Ollie’ experiences a sinking feeling. Living becomes even more robotic and the vicious circle effect is reinforced. Beyond a certain point we feel as if we are cut off from reality by a kind of glass wall: suddenly it seems self-evident that there is nothing new under the sun, that all human effort is vanity, that man is a useless passion and that life is a horrible joke devised by some demonic creator. This is the state I have decribed as ‘upside-downness’, the tendency to allow negative emotional judgements to usurp the place of objective rational judgements. Moreover this depressing state masquerades as the ‘voice of experience’, since it seems obvious that you ‘know’ more about an experience when you’ve had it a hundred times. This is the real cause of death in most human beings: they mistake the vicious circle effects of ‘upside-downness’ for the wisdom of age, and give up the struggle.
Colin Wilson (Beyond the Occult: Twenty Years' Research into the Paranormal)
There were thousands of Kantoreks, all of whom were convinced that they were acting for the best—in a way that cost them nothing. And that is why they let us down so badly. For us lads of eighteen they ought to have been mediators and guides to the world of maturity, the world of work, of duty, of culture, of progress—to the future. We often made fun of them and played jokes on them, but in our hearts we trusted them. The idea of authority, which they represented, was associated in our minds with a greater insight and a more humane wisdom. But the first death we saw shattered this belief. We had to recognize that our generation was more to be trusted than theirs. They surpassed us only in phrases and in cleverness. The first bombardment showed us our mistake, and under it the world as they had taught it to us broke in pieces. While they continued to write and talk, we saw the wounded and dying. While they taught that duty to one’s country is the greatest thing, we already knew that death-throes are stronger.
Erich Maria Remarque (All Quiet on the Western Front)
Be Sure to Take Time Take time to think: it is the source of great ideas. Take time to read: it is the foundation of wisdom. Take time to joke and play: it is the secret of staying young. Take time to be quiet: it is the opportunity to hear God. Take time to pray: it is the greatest power on earth. Take time to see others’ needs: it is the opportunity to help others. Take time to love and be loved: it is God’s greatest gift. Take time to praise God: It is the road to worship. Take time to laugh: it is the music of the soul.
Aurora A. Ambrose (Live Sunny Side Up: The B's of Joyful Living)
In an old academic joke, a dean is presiding over a faculty meeting when a genie appears and offers him one of three wishes—money, fame, or wisdom. The dean replies, “That’s easy. I’m a scholar. I’ve devoted my life to understanding. Of course I’ll take wisdom.” The genie waves his hand and vanishes in a puff of smoke. The smoke clears to reveal the dean with his head in his hands, lost in thought. A minute elapses. Ten minutes. Fifteen. Finally a professor calls out, “Well? Well?” The dean mutters, “I should have taken the money.
Steven Pinker (Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress)
In explaining this Somalia-to-Sweden continuum, with poor violent repressive unhappy countries at one end and rich peaceful liberal happy ones at the other, correlation is not causation, and other factors like education, geography, history, and culture may play roles.60 But when the quants try to tease them apart, they find that economic development does seem to be a major mover of human welfare.61 In an old academic joke, a dean is presiding over a faculty meeting when a genie appears and offers him one of three wishes—money, fame, or wisdom. The dean replies, “That’s easy. I’m a scholar. I’ve devoted my life to understanding. Of course I’ll
Steven Pinker (Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress)
And that is why they let us down so badly. For us lads of eighteen they ought to have been mediators and guides to the world of maturity, the world of work, of duty, of culture, of progress - to the future. We often made fun of them and played jokes on them, but in our hearts we trusted them. The idea of authority, which they represented, was associated in our minds with a greater insight and a more humane wisdom. But the first death we saw shattered this belief. We had to recognize that our generation was more to be trusted than theirs. They surpassed us only in phrases and in cleverness. The first bombardment showed us our mistake, and under it the world as they had taught it to us broke in pieces.
Erich Maria Remarque (All Quiet on the Western Front)
Do Not Stand at My Grave and Weep By Mary Elizabeth Frye Do not stand at my grave and weep.  I am not there; I do not sleep. I am a thousand winds that blow, I am the diamond glints on snow, I am the sunlight on ripened grain, I am the gentle autumn rain. When you awaken in the morning’s hush I am the swift uplifting rush Of quiet birds in circling flight. I am the soft star-shine at night.  Do not stand at my grave and cry, I am not there; I did not die. Death Is Nothing At All By Henry Scott Howard Death is nothing at all. I have only slipped away to the next room. I am I and you are you. Whatever we were to each other, That, we still are. Call me by my old familiar name. Speak to me in the easy way which you always used. Put no difference into your tone. Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow. Laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes we enjoyed together. Play, smile, think of me. Pray for me. Let my name be ever the household word
Liz Eastwood (Soul Comfort for Cat Lovers: Coping wisdom for heart and soul after the loss of a beloved feline)
Me, and Miss Bessie. Miss Bessie, too, must have been up late. I couldn’t imagine her doing anything as lax and unguarded as sleeping. Her eyes – not sarcastic eyes, I now realized, but merry eyes, the eyes of an elderly child, crinkled at the corners as if she were suppressing a joke or a quaint piece of wisdom – surely those eyes of hers never closed. Perhaps she was the one responsible for choosing our required reading material – she, and a group of others like her, all of a certain age, all with excellent suits, all with real stones in their lapel brooches, all with qualifications. They got together, they had secret meetings, they conferred, they cooked up our book list among them. They knew something we needed to know, but it was a complicated thing – not so much a thing as a pattern, like the clues in a detective story once you started connecting them together. These women – these teachers – had no direct method of conveying this thing to us, not in a way that would make us listen, because it was too tangled, it was too oblique. It was hidden within the stories.
Margaret Atwood (Moral Disorder and Other Stories)
And that is why they let us down so badly. For us lads of eighteen they ought to have been mediators and guides to the world of maturity, the world of work, of duty, of culture, of progress - to the future. We often made fun of them and played jokes on them, but in our hearts we trusted them. The idea of authority, which they represented, was associated in our minds with a greater insight and a more humane wisdom. But the first death we saw shattered this belief. We had to recognize that our generation was more to be trusted than theirs. They surpassed us only in phrases and in cleverness. The first bombardment showed us our mistake, and under it the world as they had taught it to us broke in pieces. While they continued to write and talk, we saw the wounded and dying. While they taught that duty to one's country is the greatest thing, we already knew that death-throes are stronger . . . We loved our country as much as they; we went courageously into every action; but also we distinguished the false from true, we had suddenly learned to see. And we saw that there was nothing of their world left. We were all at once terribly alone; and alone we must see it through.
Erich Maria Remarque (All Quiet on the Western Front)
I hope at 50 I'll be dancing like Gianluca Vacchi Party, whiskey, Bellini, Martini, Bloody Maries Bad & Boujee, Tutti Fruity booty, type that really moves me Kundalini rising, energy fill me completely I hope at 50 I'll be writing books like JK Rowling Pen and paper take me places, countries far and foreign Find a cafe up in Edinburgh, write in Scotland Let the stories in my head come out, bloom and blossom I hope at 50
I'll be wealthy like Carlos Slim Buying yachts and mansions and my mother shiny things Encrusted diamond dial on a new Patek Philippe Chill in Maldives but do charity in Ardabil I hope at 50
I'll be funny like Stephen Colbert Cracking witty jokes, making everyone laugh in tears Laughter it goes round and round like a carousel Chronic comic sonic sounds of haha everywhere I hope at 50
I'll be stoic like Robert De Niro Zeno school of thought put an end to my evil ego I hope at 50
I'll be fit as The Rock, Dwayne Johnson Hard rock abs to be paired with an even harder mindset I hope at 50,
I'll be wise like Denzel Washington
Wisdom, knowledge and the faith of God under my skin I hope at 50,
I'll find real love like George Clooney
Amal Alamuddin clone is the type that really moves me
Soroosh Shahrivar (Letter 19)
Knowledge is knowing an eggplant and a bell pepper are fruits. Wisdom is not putting them in your fruit salad.
Donald Shaw (+300 Best Jokes: Dirty One-Liners and Funny Short Stories Collection (Donald's Humor Factory Book 2))
When a hilarious joke triggers uncontrollable laughter, at some point tears roll out from the eyes. The
Shubha Vilas (Open Eyed Meditations: practical wisdom for everyday life)
More you know, better advice you give. Less you know, more advice you give.
Gerry Geek (Ice Breakers for Project Managers: Jokes, Quotes, and Brainteasers)
Just like you silly bums, I have a personal sky god. I bow to him, as you do to your airy-fairy sod. He prefers I call him Mr. NOT.
Fakeer Ishavardas
ln imitation of Zeus' conception of Athene, gnostic Sophia produces a self-conceived offspring. As we read on, it may be thought that the Goddess has perpetrated a great joke. In the Valentinian Gnosis, the Demiurge-the alleged creator of the world-thinks that he has created everything out of himself. However, Achamoth (Sophia) wishes to be seeded everywhere without his knowledge. Accordingly, she conceives an embryo and secretly inserts it into the Demiurge, "that it might be sown into the soul created by him and into the material body .. . and might become ready for the reception of the perfect Logos." Accordingly, humanity does not derive its soul from the false Demiurge, but from the Mother Above. This gnostic joke may perhaps be translated into Athenian terms, for Metis is pregnant with Athene when Zeus swallows her, and Zeus remains forever afterward in her mighty shadow. Metis is derived of an earlier breed of gods, like gnostic Sophia, and her influence is absorbed by Zeus. Zeus acts like a divine creator, though it is his foremothers who are the real shapers.
Caitlín Matthews (Sophia: Goddess of Wisdom, Bride of God)
Love is no longer a crucial theme to discuss. It has lost its importance. It becomes a pearl of neglected wisdom, thrown away from its place, and is called only for joking and blaming.
Zainurrahman (Love Course)
What will happen to a joke when no one can hear it anymore? How lonely those words will be, when their power is gone. Where will they go? Off to join the stories that can never be told again.” So now my house is spangled with Post-it notes in another language, as if I were studying for a trip abroad. But I’m not going away, I’m coming home.
Robin Wall Kimmerer (Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants)
Find a way to laugh about it and the sting will miraculously diffuse; joke about it and the pain will be no more. Just learn to take it easy and have life.
Dr. Lucas D. Shallua
Wisdom without humanity is nothing more than a joke.
The Philosopher Orod Bozorg
That’s the argument. He wants all of our choices to be based on the worst-case scenario. I can see the wisdom in that kind of planning for lots of situations. It would make a wedding feel like a funeral. It would turn every dream into a cruel joke.
Skye Warren (Two for the Show (One for the Money, #2))
You want to talk about destructive? How about being locked in our little fishbowls, in this joke of an existence imposed on us by the limits of our primate senses? Life is suffering. But it doesn’t have to be. Why should you be forced to accept your daughter’s death when you can change it? Why shouldn’t a dying man go back to his youth with full wisdom and knowledge instead of gasping out his last hours in agony? Why let a tragedy unfold when you could go back and prevent it? What you’re defending isn’t reality—it’s a prison, a lie.” Slade looks at Helena. “You know this. You have to see this. You’ve ushered in a new age for humanity. One where we no longer have to suffer and die. Where we can experience so much. Trust me, your perspective changes when you’ve lived countless lives. You’ve allowed us to escape the limitations of our senses. You’ve saved us all. That’s your legacy.
Blake Crouch (Recursion)
love capturing memories. Emotion that’s usually fleeting being frozen forever in time. The wisdom in the gaze of a person who’s lived a full life. The look in someone’s eyes when they realize they’re in love. The joy in their face when they’re laughing at a joke. Photographs help us remember things we’d otherwise forget.
Emily McIntire (Twisted (Never After, #4))
Don’t grieve for me!” He glanced about the audience, brows high. “No? No one? The truth is, at my best, I’ve been a barely adequate king. My father’s son, I daresay. Though allow me to take just a little pride in my victory against the odds at Stoffenbeck. Unfortunate timing, to take the throne with not one but two bloody revolts on the way, but that’s no excuse, really. There’s always something horrible on the way, after all. You’ll see. Not that I bear any of you ill will, you understand. Ill will is too heavy a thing to carry through life, let alone up onto a scaffold, and it’s useless in a fight in any case.” Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the executioner wrap his hands around the lever. “Well! I think I’m being given the signal to finish up. To my sister, Savine…” He grinned over at her. The way he used to, when they were together, in Sworbreck’s office. When he had just thought of the best joke. One he knew she would love. That was how he wanted her to think of him. As he had been. As they had been. “I take some comfort in knowing you’ll be a far better ruler than I ever was. We have had our differences, but you remain the woman I most admire. And, let’s be honest, the only one I’ve ever loved.” He was gratified to see a tear slide down her cheek. It was not as if it had all been worth it, for one tear, but it was something. He grinned at the Lord Regent. “To her husband, Leo dan Brock, I can only say… how’s your leg?” He gave one last chuckle, and it became a sigh. “Let’s get on with it,” he said. There was a clatter as the trap dropped open.
Joe Abercrombie (The Wisdom of Crowds (The Age of Madness, #3))
Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit.  Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.
Graham Cann (1001 One-Liners and Short Jokes: The Ultimate Collection of the Funniest, Laugh-Out-Loud Rib-Ticklers (1001 Jokes and Puns))
The origin of the word knowledge itself is strongly tied to trees. "In the Germanic languages, most terms for learning, knowledge, wisdom, and so on are derived from the words for tree or wood," says Hageneder. "In Anglo Saxon we have witan (mind, consciousness) and witige (wisdom); in English, 'wits,' 'witch', and wizard'; and in modern German, Witz (wits, joke). These words all stem from the ancient Scandinavian root word vid, which means 'wood' (as in forest, not timber).
Manuel Lima (Visual Complexity: Mapping Patterns of Information)
An old Wall Street joke gets close to our experience: Customer: Thanks for putting me in XYZ stock at 5. I hear it’s up to 18. Broker: Yes, and that’s just the beginning. In fact, the company is doing so well now, that it’s an even better buy at 18 than it was when you made your purchase. Customer: Damn, I knew I should have waited.
Mark Gavagan (Gems from Warren Buffett: Wit and Wisdom from 34 Years of Letters to Shareholders)
The Alchemy of Grit and Shit Pearls of wisdom opalescent, shucked from scalloped shells, grow from grit and shit, of things unpleasant, of each man's personal hell. Often creation's bejeweled fundaments grow from excrement, nature's inside joke, the stink a wink to those attuned, that the squalid and most foul shall alchemize into the excellent. Such is the temperament of the twin-mooned oyster's wound!
Beryl Dov
blessing of the LORD makes rich, and he adds no sorrow with it. [1] 23Doing wrong is like a joke to a fool, but wisdom is pleasure to a man of understanding.
Anonymous (Holy Bible - ESV MacArthur Study Bible)
A lie can run deeper than strength or wisdom. And hadn’t the world proved to be a bitter joke?
Mark Lawrence (The Liar's Key (The Red Queen's War, #2))
No! I would not like it if they were serious in their criticism. But, if it is said as a joke, I would take it lightly.” “Mark my words young man: if you don’t have anything positive to say about someone, it is best to say nothing at all. Life is like a boomerang; whatever you dispense will return to you,” advised my guardian. Nodding my head, I gave my Valet a kiss to thank him for his words of wisdom.
Young (Unbridled (A Harem Boy's Saga, #2))
There is a special pleasure in the irony of a moralist brought down for the very moral failings he has condemned. It’s the pleasure of a well-told joke. Some jokes are funny as one-liners, but most require three verses: three guys, say, who walk into a bar one at a time, or a priest, a minister, and a rabbi in a lifeboat. The first two set the pattern, and the third violates it. With hypocrisy, the hypocrite’s preaching is the setup, the hypocritical action is the punch line.
Jonathan Haidt (The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom)
the people who are best at telling jokes tend to have more health problems than the people laughing at them. A study of Finnish police officers found that those who were seen as funniest smoked more, weighed more, and were at greater risk of cardiovascular disease than their peers [10]. Entertainers typically die earlier than other famous people [11], and comedians exhibit more “psychotic traits” than others [12]. So just as there’s research to back up the conventional wisdom on laughter’s curative powers, there also seems to be truth to the stereotype that funny people aren’t always having much fun. It might feel good to crack others up now and then, but apparently the audience gets the last laugh.
Anonymous
When the law makers don't respect the law. The law becomes a joke. Those who have authority lose power. The justice system gets mocked.
D.J. Kyos
GODMAN QUOTES 1 *** Born a God *** It’s a sign of laxity waiting for the future to come to be a hope to stay. Depend in what you can do to give what you can offer. If you rest in your trouble your peace is in trouble. The idea of a great thinker comes in thinking about the impossible. You can’t rebuke a bluff when you are taken in jokes. Your best is in the bluffs that snitch your glory. A value of anything is what you have accepted it to be. Because of troubles don’t run from problems. Better days will come but the best time is unknown. If you believe in yourself also believe in your worse.
Godman Tochukwu Sabastine
What will happen to a joke when no one can hear it anymore? How lonely those words will be, when their power is gone. Where will they go? Off to join the stories that can never be told again.” So now my house is spangled with Post-it notes in another language, as if I were studying for a trip abroad. But I’m not going away, I’m coming home.
Robin Wall Kimmerer (Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants)
the poet William Blake wrote in his ‘Proverbs of Hell’ that ‘The road of excess leads to the Palace of Wisdom’, he wasn’t joking?
Adam Phillips (On Balance)
20. Immigrant One day, a thief came to the house of Hodja and took everything he had except the blanket which covered him. When Hodja saw the thief carrying all his things away, he put his blanket over his shoulders and followed him. When the thief arrived at his own house, he turned back and saw Hodja. “What are you doing here?” he asked. “What am I doing here,” said the Hodja, “you ask a thing like that?  Didn't we move to this house?
Molla Nasreddin (The Jokes of Nasreddin Hodja: The world is not a tragedy, but a comedy. (ABSURD's 'Pure Wisdom' Series Book 3))
What will happen to a joke when no one can hear it anymore? How lonely those words will be, when their power is gone. Where will they go? Off to join the stories that can never be told again.
Robin Wall Kimmerer (Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants)
When the law is a joke. People of that country, their government and president are seen as clowns.
D.J. Kyos
Draco’s aloofness, Ron’s jokes, Hermione’s sharp wit, Hagrid’s bumbling kindness, Voldemort’s wickedness, Dumbledore’s wisdom: all of these are thrown into relief by Harry’s constant, unwavering solidness.
Tom Felton (Beyond the Wand: The Magic and Mayhem of Growing Up a Wizard)
The quality of a small boy showing his friends a dirty joke and explaining the brilliance lay not in the filth but in the subtlety.
Gordon Roddick