“The whole difference between construction and creation is exactly this: that a thing constructed can only be loved after it is constructed; but a thing created is loved before it exists.”
― Charles Dickens
@edgarblythe,
"No one can make you feel inferior without your consent."
Eleanor Roosevelt
“If you wish to glimpse inside a human soul and get to know a man, don't bother analyzing his ways of being silent, of talking, of weeping, of seeing how much he is moved by noble ideas; you will get better results if you just watch him laugh. If he laughs well, he's a good man.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky
@vonny,
vonny wrote:
“If you wish to glimpse inside a human soul and get to know a man, don't bother analyzing his ways of being silent, of talking, of weeping, of seeing how much he is moved by noble ideas; you will get better results if you just watch him laugh. If he laughs well, he's a good man.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Do you agree with that strange quote. How would you define "laughing well?"
@Advocate,
There is a way of telling but it requires physiognomic flair. And there's an explanation.
@spendius,
CI often adds a "LOL" to his posts. Would you say that is laughing "well?"
“There are all kinds of pedants around with more time to read and imitate Lynne Truss and John Humphrys than to write poems, love-letters, novels and stories it seems. They whip out their Sharpies and take away and add apostrophes from public signs, shake their heads at prepositions which end sentences and mutter at split infinitives and misspellings, but do they bubble and froth and slobber and cream with joy at language? Do they ever let the tripping of the tips of their tongues against the tops of their teeth transport them to giddy euphoric bliss? Do they ever yoke impossible words together for the sound-sex of it? Do they use language to seduce, charm, excite, please, affirm and tickle those they talk to? Do they? I doubt it. They’re too farting busy sneering at a greengrocer’s less than perfect use of the apostrophe. Well sod them to Hades. They think they’re guardians of language. They’re no more guardians of language than the Kennel Club is the guardian of dogkind.”
― Stephen Fry
@vonny,
That last sentence almost justifies the whole preceding diatribe, vonny.
@Lustig Andrei,
But what if the mocked statement is beyond the pale. One can stand only so much.
@Advocate,
Quote:CI often adds a "LOL" to his posts. Would you say that is laughing "well?"
No.
It's more a snarl like it is when Apisa does more long-winded versions.
I know exactly what Dostoyevsky meant.
"And I heard him exclaim as he rode out of sight, Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night" Clement Clark Moore..(disputed by some)
@vonny,
But nobody could construct such sentences who is laughing "well" vonny. Laughing well debilitates motor activity and hand eye co-ordination.
I had to really concentrate to get that down in orderly syntax.
@spendius,
If anybody wants to get an inkling of it I suggest they read Rabelais and then go to Wiki and stare at the picture they have of the guy.
Proust has a photograph which provides a similar effect. So does Frank Harris. A few in fact.
@spendius,
Reading an Apisa post can bring it on pretty efficiently.
@spendius,
It's best to have your feet in a bucket of iced water before looking at a picture of Apisa.
"Only those who risk going too far can possibly find out how far they can go."
T. S. Eliot
@tsarstepan,
"You never conquer a mountain. Mountains can't be conquered; you conquer yourself - your hopes, your fears."
Jim Whitaker
Christmas... is not an external event at all, but a piece of one's home that one carries in one's heart.
- Freya Stark
Christmas is not a time nor a season, but a state of mind. To cherish peace and goodwill, to be plenteous in mercy, is to have the real spirit of Christmas.
- Calvin Coolidge
