A sense of humor is the ability to understand a joke-and that the joke is oneself.
Interpretation
Having a sense of humor means being able to laugh at oneself.
Clifton Fadiman's quote emphasizes the importance of self-deprecating humor as a crucial part of understanding and appreciating oneβs own flaws and limitations. By acknowledging that we can be the subject of our own jokes, it encourages a light-hearted approach to life that fosters resilience and relatability, ultimately enriching our human experience.
In practice
Using this quote in a speech about resilience and the importance of laughter in tough times.
To read in bed is to draw around us invisible, noiseless curtains. Then at last we are in a room of our own and are ready to burrow back, back to that private life of the imagination we all led as a child and to whose secret satisfactions so many of us have mislaid the key.
One measure of friendship consists not in the number of things friends can discuss, but in the number of things they need no longer mention.
Insomnia is a gross feeder. It will nourish itself on any kind of thinking, including thinking about not thinking.
A sense of humor is the ability to understand a joke - and that the joke is oneself.
There are two kinds of writers; the great ones who can give you truths, and the lessor ones, who can only give you themselves.
When you reread a classic, you do not see more in the book than you did before; you see more in you than there was before.
A man's only as old as the woman he feels.
The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.
It was a nasty look. It made me feel as if I were something the dog had brought in and intended to bury later on, when he had time.
The bigger the humbug, the better people will like it.
Just making the crowd laugh is not really doing things for me anymore. That's just knowing how to kill; I've learned how to kill - but also learned when a crowd's laughter is meaningful.
I ask people why they have deer heads on their walls. They always say because it's such a beautiful animal. There you go. I think my mother is attractive, but I have photographs of her.
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