Aldous Huxley on humor

Experience is not what happens to a man; it is what a man does with what happens to him.

Ignore death up to the last moment; then, when it can’t be ignored any longer, have yourself squirted full of morphia and shuffle off in a coma. Thoroughly sensible, humane and scientific, eh?

To us, the moment 8:17 A.M. means something⁠—something very important, if it happens to be the starting time of our daily train. To our ancestors, such an odd eccentric instant was without significance⁠—did not even exist. In inventing the locomotive, Watt and Stevenson were part inventors of time.

Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh.

George Bernard Shaw1856–1950The Doctor’s Dilemma (1911), Act V

• Life & Death

Humor is the great thing, the saving thing. The minute it crops up, all our irritation and resentments slip away, and a sunny spirit takes their place.

Mark Twain1835–1910“What Paul Bourget Thinks of Us?” (1897)

You can turn painful situations around through laughter. If you can find humor in anything, even poverty, you can survive it.

Bill Cosbyborn 1937