A good laugh is a mighty good thing, and rather too scarce a good thing.
Interpretation
Laughter is important and valuable, yet it is often rare.
Herman Melville emphasizes the significance of laughter in life, suggesting that it is a powerful tool for joy and well-being. He implies that despite its value, genuine laughter is not common, highlighting the need for more moments of joy in our lives.
In practice
In a speech about mental health, I would quote Melville to emphasize the benefits of laughter.
A good laugh is a mighty good thing, and rather too scarce a good thing; the more's the pity. So, if any one man, in his own proper person, afford stuff for a good joke to anybody, let him not be backward, but let him cheerfully allow himself to spend and be spent in that way. And the man that has anything bountifully laughable about him, be sure there is more in that man than you perhaps think for.
The Marquesan girls dance all over; not only do their feet dance, but their arms, hands, fingers, ay, their very eyes seem to dance in their heads.
Dream tonight of peacock tails, Diamond fields and spouter whales. Ills are many, blessing few, But dreams tonight will shelter you.
Why did the old Persians hold the sea holy? Why did the Greeks give it a separate deity, and own brother Jove? Surely all this is not without meaning. And still deeper the meaning of that story of Narcissus, who because he could not grasp the tormenting mild image he saw in the fountain, plunged into it and was drowned. But that same image, we ourselves see in all rivers and oceans. It is the image of the ungraspable phantom of life; and this is the key to it all.
If some books are deemed most baneful and their sale forbid, how then with deadlier facts, not dreams of doting men? Those whom books will hurt will not be proof against events. Events, not books should be forbid.
You cannot spill a drop of American blood without spilling the blood of the whole world.... We are not a nation, so much as a world.
Better sexy and racy Than sexist and racist
Sex: the pleasure is momentary, the position ridiculous, and the expense damnable.
When I find someone I respect writing about an edgy, nervous wine that dithered in the glass, I cringe. When I hear someone I don't respect talking about an austere, unforgiving wine, I turn a bit austere and unforgiving myself. When I come across stuff like that and remember about the figs and bananas, I want to snigger uneasily. You can call a wine red, and dry, and strong, and pleasant. After that, watch out.
May my last breath be drawn through a pipe, and exhaled in a jest.
I was kind of shy as a lad, and a lot of things that made me laugh, I found, did not make other people laugh.
Hypocrite: The man who murdered his parents, and then pleaded for mercy on the grounds that he was an orphan.
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