Make others laugh

Positive psychologists have conducted research on humor and discovered that it is more than idle entertainment, it is beneficial. Humor, according to researchers, buffers a good mood against life’s stresses, promotes health, and is a sign of creativity and intelligence. Psychologists tell us that playfulness is at the heart of humor. In short, humor is the ability to recognize and delight in incongruity, to see the light side of adversity, and to make others smile or laugh. It is likely that humor helps bond relationships, as most folks are attracted to others who are in a good mood. The other major function of humor is overcoming stress. In fact, while Spidey uses humor to take the edge off of the life or death situations he finds himself in, we – the readers – feel increasingly connected to him because we are drawn in by his wit. One of the great appeals of Spider-Man is his humor.

by Robert Biswas-Diener
from Positive Psychology of Peter Parker (2008)
found in The Psychology of Superheroes: An Unauthorized Exploration (2008)
edited by Robin Rosenberg PhD
image – D Sharon Pruitt

Thou pendulum betwixt a smile and tear,
Ages and realms are crowded in this span

CVIII.

There is the moral of all human tales;”
“Tis but the same rehearsal of the past,
First Freedom, and then Glory — when that fails,
Wealth, vice, corruption, — barbarism at last.
And History, with all her volumes vast,
Hath but one page, — ’tis better written here,
Where gorgeous Tyranny hath thus amass’d
All treasures, all delights, that eye or ear,
Heart, soul could seek, tongue ask — Away with words! draw near,

CIX.

Admire, exult, despise, laugh, weep, — for here
There is such matter for all feeling: — Man!
Thou pendulum betwixt a smile and tear,
Ages and realms are crowded in this span,
This mountain, whose obliterated plan
The pyramid of empires pinnacled,
Of Glory’s gewgaws shining in the van
Till the sun’s rays with added flame were fill’d!
Where are its golden roofs? where those who dared to build?

by Lord Byron (January 22, 1788 – April 19, 1824)
from Canto the Fourth – Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage (1812)
image – Meagan Fisher

We are never so fortunate or unfortunate as we suppose

by François de La Rochefoucauld (15 September 1613 – 17 March 1680)
from Maxims
#49
image – jenny downing

Filled with their laughter and their weeping

Wang Lung, then, in the space of five years had four grandsons and three grand-daughters and the courts were filled with their laughter and their weeping.

Now five years is nothing in a man’s life except when he is very young and very old, and if it gave to Wang Lung these others, it also took away that old dreamer, his uncle, whom he had almost forgotten except to see that he and his old wife were fed and clothed and had what they wished of opium.

[...]

Now Wang Lung’s uncle and his wife had long since smoked all the flesh off their bones and they lay day in and day out on their bed like two dry old sticks, and there was no warmth in them. And Wang Lung heard his uncle could not sit up even any more in his bed and he spat blood whenever he moved at all, and he went out to see and saw that there were not many hours left for the old man. Then Wang Lung bought two coffins of wood good enough but not too good, and he had the coffins taken into the room where his uncle lay that the old man might see them and die in comfort, knowing there was a place for his bones. And his uncle said, his voice a quavering whisper,

“Well, and you are a son to me and more than that wandering one of my own.”

by Pearl S. Buck (26 June 1892 – 6 March 1973)
from The Good Earth (1931)
image – Alejandro Perez

But is it a pear tree, or an apple?

God has put different kinds of talents in man, as he has planted different kinds of trees in nature, and so every talent, like each tree, has its peculiar properties and effects. Thus the finest pear tree in the world could not bear the commonest apples, and the most excellent talent could not produce the same effects as the most commonplace; and thus again it is as ridiculous to want to write maxims if you have not the seed within you as to expect a flower-bed to produce tulips if no bulbs have been planted.

by François de La Rochefoucauld (15 September 1613 – 17 March 1680)
from his Maxims
#505
image – Mrs. Gemstone

It's not important where the angel came from, or how she broke her wing

The best artists know what to leave out. They know how much of the support should show through as the pigment is applied, what details aren’t necessary. They suggest, and let their viewer fill in whatever else is needed to make the communication complete. They aren’t afraid to work with a smaller palette, to delete excess verbiage or place rests on the musical staff, for they know that almost every creative endeavor can be improved with a certain measure of understatement. For isn’t it the silence between the notes that often gives music its resonance? What lies between the lines of the poem or story, the dialogue the actor doesn’t speak, the pauses between the dancer’s steps? The spaces can be just as important as what’s distinctly portrayed.

So it’s not important where the angel came from, or how she broke her wing. Only that she was there for Jean to find.

by Charles de Lint (born 22 December 1951)
from The Ivory and the Horn (1996)
Chapter – Dream Harder, Dream True
image – Jaimito Cartero

Good-will makes insight

The affirmative of affirmatives is love. As much love, so much perception. As caloric to matter, so is love to mind; so it enlarges, and so it empowers it. Good-will makes insight, as one finds his way to the sea by embarking on a river. I have seen scores of people who can silence me, but I seek one who shall make me forget or overcome the frigidities and imbecilities into which I fall. The painter Giotto, Yasari tells us, renewed art because he put more goodness into his heads. To awake in man and to raise the sense of worth, to educate his feeling and judgment so that he shall scorn himself for a bad action, that is the only aim.

by Ralph Waldo Emerson (May 25, 1803 – April 27, 1882)
from Society and Solitude – Success (1870)
image – Muffet

A coward cannot long pretend to be brave at sea, nor a fool to be wise

You will very commonly observe that, in land affairs, if good fortune follows a venture it is due to the marvelous excellence of its conductor, but if ill fortune, then to evil chance alone. Now, it is not so with the sea.

The sea drives truth into a man like salt. A coward cannot long pretend to be brave at sea, nor a fool to be wise, nor a prig to be a good companion, and any venture connected with the sea is full of venture and can pretend to be nothing more. Nevertheless there is a certain pride in keeping a course through different weathers, in making the best of a tide, in using cats’ paws in a dull race, and, generally, in knowing how to handle the thing you steer and to judge the water and the wind. Just because men have to tell the truth once they get into tide water, what little is due to themselves in their success thereon they are proud of and acknowledge.

by Hilaire Belloc (27 July 1870 – 16 July 1953)
from On Weighing Anchor
first published in the collection First and Last (1911)
image – Ani Carrington