A sense of humor is the ability to understand a joke-and that the joke is oneself.
Interpretation
Having a sense of humor means being able to laugh at oneself.
Clifton Fadiman's quote emphasizes the importance of self-deprecating humor as a crucial part of understanding and appreciating oneβs own flaws and limitations. By acknowledging that we can be the subject of our own jokes, it encourages a light-hearted approach to life that fosters resilience and relatability, ultimately enriching our human experience.
In practice
Using this quote in a speech about resilience and the importance of laughter in tough times.
To read in bed is to draw around us invisible, noiseless curtains. Then at last we are in a room of our own and are ready to burrow back, back to that private life of the imagination we all led as a child and to whose secret satisfactions so many of us have mislaid the key.
One measure of friendship consists not in the number of things friends can discuss, but in the number of things they need no longer mention.
Insomnia is a gross feeder. It will nourish itself on any kind of thinking, including thinking about not thinking.
A sense of humor is the ability to understand a joke - and that the joke is oneself.
There are two kinds of writers; the great ones who can give you truths, and the lessor ones, who can only give you themselves.
When you reread a classic, you do not see more in the book than you did before; you see more in you than there was before.
I like to watch the news, because I don't like people very much and when you watch the news... if you ever had an idea that people were really terrible, you could watch the news and know that you're right.
It is a fair, even-handed, noble adjustment of things, that while there is infection in disease and sorrow, there is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good humour.
There was always another side to a joke, the side of the victim.
I have been born more times than anybody except Krishna.
Stand-up is the place where you can do things that you could never do in public.
The test of a real comedian is whether you laugh at him before he opens his mouth.
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