I meander between different genres of lit--lit which often happens to be from days of yore--and enjoy posting from many of said meanderings.
Posts tagged humor
It’s a troublesome world. All the people who’re in it
are troubled with troubles almost every minute.
You ought to be thankful, a whole heaping lot
for the people and places you’re lucky you’re not!
[M]y spelling is Wobbly. It’s good spelling but it Wobbles, and the letters get in the wrong places.
‘Hallo!’ said Piglet, ‘what are you doing?’
‘Hunting,’ said Pooh.
‘Hunting what?’
‘Tracking something,’ said Winnie-the-Pooh very mysteriously.
‘Tracking what?’ said Piglet, coming closer
‘That’s just what I ask myself. I ask myself, What?’
‘What do you think you’ll answer?’
‘I shall have to wait until I catch up with it,’ said Winnie-the-Pooh.
Winnie-the-Pooh.
When I first heard his name, I said, just as you are going to say, ‘But I thought he was a boy?’
‘So did I,’ said Christopher Robin.
‘Then you can’t call him Winnie?’
‘I don’t.’
‘But you said—’
‘He’s Winnie-ther-Pooh. Don’t you know what “ther” means?’
‘Ah, yes, now I do,’ I said quickly; and I hope you do too, because it is all the explanation you are going to get.
On Need-pleasures (pleasure we receive when a need is fulfilled):
They are not hated once we have had them, but they certainly “die on us” with extraordinary abruptness, and completely. The scullery tap and the tumbler are very attractive indeed when we come in parched from mowing the grass; six seconds later they are emptied of all interest. The smell of frying food is very different before and after breakfast. And, if you will forgive me for citing the most extreme instance of all, have there not for most of us been moments (in a strange town) when the sight of the word GENTLEMEN over a door has roused a joy almost worthy of celebration in verse?
~C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves
Proof that there are few problems mead can’t solve:
At one stage [during a battle], Kolskegg was taking a rest aboard Gunnar’s ship. Gunnar noticed this and said to him, ‘You have been kinder to others than to yourself today, for you have quenched their thirst forever.’ Kolskegg took a bowl full of mead, drained it, and returned to the fight.
~Njal’s Saga
Humorous logical turn-around (or, on guilt by association):
Sometimes … it takes a lot of didactic tricks to detach people from their superstitions. An American woman once confronted me with the reproach, “How can you still write some of your books in German, Adolf Hitler’s language?” In response, I asked her if she had knives in her kitchen, and when she answered that she did, I acted dismayed and shocked, exclaiming, “How can you still use knives after so many killers have used them to stab and murder their victims?” She stopped objecting to my writing books in German.
~Viktor Frankl, “Case for a Tragic Optimism,” Man’s Search for Meaning
‘Then [Luna’ll] be in Azkaban, I expect,’ said Ron. ‘Whether she survives the place, though … Loads don’t….’
‘She will,’ said Harry. He could not bear to contemplate the alternative. ‘She’s tough, Luna, much tougher than you’d think. She’s probably teaching all the inmates about Wrackspurts and Nargles.’
It seemed as though Gryffindor could do no wrong. Again and again they scored, and again and again, at the other end of the pitch, Ron saved goals with apparent ease. He was actually smiling now, and when the crowd greeted a particularly good save with a rousing chorus of the old favorite ‘Weasley Is Our King,’ he pretended to conduct them from on high.
