Comedy is simply a funny way of being serious.
Interpretation
Comedy uses humor to address serious topics in a light-hearted manner.
This quote by Peter Ustinov suggests that comedy serves as a unique medium to convey deeper meanings and truths, often through the guise of humor. It highlights the idea that laughter can act as a coping mechanism or a vehicle for discussing serious issues, allowing people to engage with difficult subjects without the heaviness they might otherwise carry.
In practice
In a speech about overcoming adversity, one might quote this to emphasize resilience.
Marriage is like a three-speed gearbox - affection, friendship, love. It is not advisable to crash your gears and go right through to love straightaway. You need to ease your way through. The basis of love is respect, and that needs to be learned from affection and friendship.
I'm convinced there's a small room in the attic of the Foreign Office where future diplomats are taught to stammer.
I imagine hell like this: Italian punctuality, German humour and English wine.
Parents are the bones on which children cut their teeth.
Because they have been in love they have survived everything that life could throw at them, even their own failures.
Corruption is nature's way of restoring our faith in democracy.
In two decades I've lost a total of 789 pounds. I should be hanging from a charm bracelet.
Show me someone not full of herself and I'll show you a hungry person.
You donβt want a general houseworker, do you? Or a traveling companion, quiet, refined, speaks fluent French entirely in the present tense? Or an assistant billiard-maker? Or a private librarian? Or a lady car-washer? Because if you do, I should appreciate your giving me a trial at the job. Any minute now, I am going to become one of the Great Unemployed. I am about to leave literature flat on its face. I donβt want to review books any more. It cuts in too much on my reading.
The truthiness is, anyone can read the news to you. I promise to feel the news 'at' you.
How can you govern a country which has 246 varieties of cheese?
I'm glad I'm funny. I'm glad I make people happy, because that's very important. But I'm proud to be known as a kind person.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.