Laughter is wine for the soul - laughter soft, or loud and deep, tinged through with seriousness - the hilarious declaration made by man that life is worth living.
Sean O'CaseyRead
There's nothing so passionate as a vested interest disguised as an intellectual conviction.
Interpretation
People often disguise their personal interests as beliefs to appear more principled.
This quote by Sean O'Casey highlights the tendency of individuals to mask their true motivations with the facade of intellectual integrity. It suggests that strong personal interests can lead to the appearance of deep philosophical beliefs, revealing the complex interplay between self-interest and the pursuit of truth or moral conviction.
In practice
In a debate on public policy, this quote can illustrate hidden motives behind arguments.
Laughter is wine for the soul - laughter soft, or loud and deep, tinged through with seriousness - the hilarious declaration made by man that life is worth living.
If church prelates, past or present, had even an inkling of physiology they'd realize that what they term this inner ugliness creates and nourishes the hearing ear, the seeing eye, the active mind, and energetic body of man and woman, in the same way that dirt and dung at the roots give the plant its delicate leaves and the full-blown rose.
The drama's altar isn't on the stage: it is candle-sticked and flowered in the box office. There is the gold, though there be no frankincense or myrrh; and the gospel for the day always The Play will Run for a Year. The Dove of Inspiration, of the desire for inspiration, has flown away from it; and on it's roof, now, the commonplace crow caws candidly.
Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed, great as each may be, their highest comfort given to the sorrowful is a cordial introduction into another's woe. Sorrow's the great community in which all men born of woman are members at one time or another.
Wealth often takes away chances from men as well as poverty. There is none to tell the rich to go on striving, for a rich man makes the law that hallows and hollows his own life.
Politics - I don't know why, but they seem to have a tendency to separate us, to keep us from one another, while nature is always and ever making efforts to bring us together.
When I read the Bhagavad-Gita and reflect about how God created this universe everything else seems so superfluous
We divorced ourselves from the materials of the earth, the rock, the wood, the iron ore; we looked to new materials which were cooked in vats, long complex derivatives of urine which we called plastic. They had no odor of the living, ... their touch was alien to nature. ... [They proliferated] like the matastases of cancer cells.
I am convinced that the deepest desire within each of us is to be liberated from the controlling influences of our own psychic madness or patterns of fear. All other things—the disdain of ordinary life, the need to control others rather than be controlled, the craving for material goods as a means of security and protection against the winds of chaos—are external props that serve as substitutes for the real battle, which is the one waged within the individual soul.
Who are you to condemn another's sin? He who condemns sin becomes part of it, espouses it.
Yes, now I understood for the first time that my soul was not so poor and empty as it had seemed to me, and that it had been only the sun that was lacking to open all its germs, and buds to the light.
My mission is to kill time, and time's to kill me in its turn. How comfortable one is among murderers.
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