Without inquiring too deeply into the causes which make it possible to find subjects of gaiety always close at hand, the proof of that possibility can be found in the fact that persons of sensitive intelligence are capable of finding comic potentialities in everything and everybody, thereby demonstrating that if some people hold the belief that there is very little that is laughable in the world, the reason is that they lack the ability to find it. Marcel Proust
About This Quote

“It is a well-known fact,” said Montaigne, “that there are fewer people who laugh at the same things today than in the past. One would think that men had lost their sense of humor or that a surfeit of laughter had been found out. And yet it is obvious that the opposite is the case. I have observed many people who laugh at everything and everyone, even though they laugh at nothing other than themselves.

… In the case of those who laugh only at others, you should add that they laugh at themselves more often than they do anyone else’s misfortune. And it is no less true that they find greater joy in laughing at themselves than in laughing at others. For the reason for this is that they do not rest content with laughing once and then growing tired of it and putting an end to it; but on the contrary, they keep on laughing and delighting in their own wit no less than in looking upon others’.”

Source: Jean Santeuil

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