I don't know why it is we are in such a hurry to get up when we fall down. You might think we would lie there and rest for a while.
— Max Eastman
A liberal mind is a mind that is able to imagine itself believing anything.
A poet in history is divine, but a poet in the next room is a joke.
A joke is not a thing but a process, a trick you play on the listener's mind. You start him off toward a plausible goal, and then by a sudden twist you land him nowhere at all or just where he didn't expect to go.
A smile is the universal welcome.
The defining function of the artist is to cherish consciousness.
People who demand neutrality in any situation are usually not neutral but in favor of the status quo.
Robert Benchley has a style that is weak and lies down frequently to rest.
Laughter is, after speech, the chief thing that holds society together.
It is art that makes life, makes interest, makes importance and I know of no substitute whatever for the force and beauty of its process.
Humor is the instinct for taking pain playfully.
The worst enemy of human hope is not brute facts, but men of brains who will not face them.
It is the ability to take a joke, not make one, that proves you have a sense of humor.
Emotion is the surest arbiter of a poetic choice, and it is the priest of all supreme unions in the mind.
Classic art was the art of necessity: modern romantic art bears the stamp of caprice and chance.
Dogs laugh, but they laugh with their tails.
