It's now very common to hear people say 'I'm rather offended by that'.
Interpretation
The quote highlights how people often express offense over trivial matters in modern society.
Stephen Fry's quote reflects a contemporary trend where people frequently assert being offended, often over comments or situations that may seem minor. This points to a cultural shift in sensitivity and reactions to differing opinions or jokes, inviting both critique and laughter regarding the perceived fragility of social discourse.
In practice
In a speech about free speech, one might use this quote to emphasize the importance of tolerance towards humor.
I used many times to touch my own chest and feel, under its asthmatic quiver, the engine of the heart and lungs and blood and feel amazed at what I sensed was the enormity of the power I possessed. Not magical power, but real power. The power simply to go on, the power to endure, that is power enough, but I felt I had also the power to create, to add, to delight, to amaze and to transform.
To be human and to be adult means constantly to be in the grip of opposing emotions, to have daily to reconcile apparently conflicting tensions. I want this, but need that. I cherish this, but I adore its opposite too.
There comes a time when the blankness of the future is just so extreme, it's like such a black wall of nothingness. Not of bad things like a cave full of monsters and so, you're afraid of entering it. It's just nothingness, the void, emptiness and it is just horrible. It's like contemplating a future-less future and so you just want to step out of it. The monstrosity of being alive overwhelms you.
As someone who worked hard for a Labour victory in the 90s, do I regret it? Not really. It was bound to happen. And it'll happen with the next government, and the one after it. Because all governments serve us. They serve the filth.
You can't just say there is a God because well, the world is beautiful. You have to account for bone cancer in children. You have to account for the fact that almost all animals in the wild live under stress with not enough to eat and will die violent and bloody deaths. There is not any way that you can just choose the nice bits and say that means there is a God and ignore the true fact of what nature is.
Money is to Everything as an Aeroplane is to Australia. The aeroplane isn't Australia, but it remains the only practical way we know of reaching it. So perhaps, metonymically, the aeroplane is Australia after all.
But satire, ever moral, ever new, Delights the reader and instructs him, too. She, if good sense refine her sterling page, Oft shakes some rooted folly of the age.
I think we're all good and bad, but good's not funny. Bad is funny. Suppress the good and let the bad out, and then you can be funny.
Little League baseball is a very good thing because it keeps the parents off the streets.
My first movie, I got nominated for a Canadian Oscar-for Meatballs. For MEATBALLS. And who am I up against? George C. Scott. So he wins the award and I stand up and go, 'That's it-let's get the hell outta here.'
When I was younger I could remember anything, whether it happened or not.
People ask me, 'Have you ever considered doing stand-up?' To me it would be less offensive if someone asked me, 'Have you ever considered dental implants?'
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.