A sense of humor is just common sense dancing.
Interpretation
A sense of humor transforms everyday situations into joyful experiences.
William James suggests that having a sense of humor is not just about being funny; it's a form of common sense that allows individuals to navigate life's challenges with grace and joy. By likening humor to 'dancing,' he implies that it is an active and dynamic approach to life, where one can find enjoyment and lightness even in serious or mundane circumstances.
In practice
In a speech about resilience, one might quote this to emphasize the importance of finding joy in tough situations.
Many persons nowadays seem to think that any conclusion must be very scientific if the arguments in favor of it are derived from twitching of frogs' legs (especially if the frogs are decapitated) and that, on the other hand, any doctrine chiefly vouched for by the feelings of human beings (with heads on their shoulders) must be benighted and superstitious.
The man who knows governments most completely is he who troubles himself least about a definition which shall give their essence. Enjoying an intimate acquaintance with all their particularities in turn, he would naturally regard an abstract conception in which these were unified as a thing more misleading than enlightening.
All the higher, more penetrating ideals are revolutionary. They present themselves far less in the guise of effects of past experience than in that of probable causes of future experience, factors to which the environment and the lessons it has so far taught us must learn to bend.
The lunatic's visions of horror are all drawn from the material of daily fact. Our civilization is founded on the shambles, and every individual existence goes out in a lonely spasm of helpless agony.
It is astonishing how many mental operations we can explain when we have once grasped the principles of association
As there is no worse lie than a truth misunderstood by those who hear it, so reasonable arguments, challenges to magnanimity, and appeals to sympathy or justice, are folly when we are dealing with human crocodiles and boa-constrictors.
There isn't a comedian in the world that hasn't bombed.
I would like to take you seriously, but to do so would be an affront to your intelligence.
My character is self-important, poorly informed, well-intentioned but an idiot. So we said, `Let's give him a promotion.'
You all watched a sketch about feminism and you didn't even know it because of all the jokes. It's like when Jessica Seinfeld puts spinach in kids' brownies. Suckers!
It is well known that humor, more than anything else in the human make-up, can afford an aloofness and an ability to rise above any situation, even if only for a few seconds.
Dogs need to sniff the ground; it's how they keep abreast of current events. The ground is a giant dog newspaper, containing all kinds of late-breaking dog news items, which, if they are especially urgent, are often continued in the next yard.
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