For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbors and laugh at them in our turn?
--
Pride and Prejudice (1813)Jane Austen
Will you make us laugh, will you make us cry?
Will you tell us when to live; will you tell us when to die?
I know we've come a long way,
We're changing day to day,
But tell me, where do the children play?Cat Stevens
Put the guns into our hands and we will use them. Give us the slogans and we will turn them into realities. Sing the battle hymns and we will take them up where you left off. Not one, not ten, not ten thousand, not a million, not ten millions, not a hundred millions but a billion, two billions of us all — the people of the world. We will have the slogans and we will have the hymns and we will have the guns and we will use them and we will live. Make no mistake of it, we will live. We will be alive and we will walk and talk and eat and sing and laugh and feel and love and bear our children in tranquillity, in security, in decency, in peace. You plan the wars, you masters of men — plan the wars and point the way and we will point the gun.
Dalton Trumbo
We can laugh at comedies like this for two reasons: Because we feel superior to the characters, or because we pity or like them. I do not much like laughing down at people, which is why the comedies of Adam Sandler make me squirmy (most people, I know, laugh because they like him). In the case of Napoleon Dynamite, I certainly don't like him, but then the movie makes no attempt to make him likable. Truth is, it doesn't even try to be a comedy. It tells his story and we are supposed to laugh because we find humor the movie pretends it doesn't know about.
Roger Ebert
When I left the University of Santo Tomas, I had but a smattering of Spanish. My friends made sport of me. What keen mortification did I suffer at my ignorance! One day, no longer able to stand the jeerings of my friends, I made up my mind to learn Spanish. I purchased a dozen good novels and began to read. I did not spend hours over a grammar, but just kept on reading, taking care to remember the idioms. In the meantime my library grew. At the end of three years my knowledge of Spanish and of literature in general was far beyond that of my friends. It was then my turn to laugh!
Epifanio de los Santos
Such a proud moment of professionalism. You work for years crafting cogent satirical essays and the thing that everybody remembers is me making love to a Chiquita and bursting into laughter. What you can't see off camera is Jon started laughing first. And then I'm weak. As much as I want to make the audience laugh, I really want to make Jon laugh.
Stephen Colbert
Austen, Jane
Auster, Paul
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