The most important lesson in the writing trade is that any manuscript is improved if you cut away the fat.
Robert A. HeinleinRead
I've found out why people laugh. They laugh because it hurts so much . . . because it's the only thing that'll make it stop hurting.
Interpretation
What this quote means
People often laugh as a response to pain, using humor as a coping mechanism.
This quote by Robert A. Heinlein illustrates the complex relationship between laughter and pain. It suggests that humor can serve as a vital antidote to suffering, providing a brief escape from emotional or physical distress, allowing individuals to confront their pain in a lighter way, or even to momentarily forget about it.
Themes
LaughterPainHumorCopingSuffering
In practice
Example use cases
During a speech about resilience, one might quote this to highlight how humor helps us cope with hardships.
More from Robert A. Heinlein
All quotes βAn armed society is a polite society.
Robert A. HeinleinRead
Democracy is a poor system of government at best; the only thing that can honestly be said in its favor is that it is eight times as good as any other method the human race has ever tried.
Robert A. HeinleinRead
Long human words (the longer the better) were easy, unmistakable, and rarely changed their meanings . . . but short words were slippery, unpredictable, changing their meanings without any pattern.
Robert A. HeinleinRead
Progress is made by lazy men looking for easier ways to do things.
Robert A. HeinleinRead
When a place gets crowded enough to require ID's, social collapse is not far away. It is time to go elsewhere. The best thing about space travel is that it made it possible to go elsewhere.
Robert A. HeinleinRead
Similar quotes
The object of a comedy is not to correct morals or ridicule the vices of society; no, a comedy should depict the discrepancies between life and purpose, should be the fruit of bitter indignation aroused by the degradation of human dignity, should be sarcasm, and not an epigram, convulsive laughter and not an amused grin, should be written with bile and not diluted salt, in a word, it should embrace life in its highest significance.
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Die, my dear? Why that's the last thing I'll do!
Groucho MarxRead
Nothing like a little judicious levity.
Robert Louis StevensonRead
Saying women aren't funny is now like saying Asians can't drive or saying black people have bad credit. It's just really, like, so obsolete.
Whitney CummingsRead
After eating, an epicure gives a thin smile of satisfaction; a gastronome, burping into his napkin, praises the food in a magazine; a gourmet, repressing his burp, criticizes the food in the same magazine; a gourmand belches happily and tells everybody where he ate; a glutton empraces the white porcelain alter, or more plainly, he barfs.
William SafireRead
No, what he didn't like about heroes was that they were usually suicidally gloomy when sober and homicidally insane when drunk.
Terry PratchettRead