“A man must sometimes laugh at himself or go mad,’ said he. ‘Few realize it. That is why there are so many madmen in the world.”

Source: Captain Blood

Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "A man must sometimes laugh at himself or go mad,’ said he. ‘Few realize it. That is why there are so many madmen in the…" by Rafael Sabatini?

Rafael Sabatini19

Italian writer 1875–1950

Related quotes

“All men are mad in some way or another, and inasmuch as you deal discreetly with your madmen, so deal with God's madmen too, the rest of the world.”

Bram Stoker book Dracula

Source: Dracula

“He would lie in the bed and finally, with daylight, he would go to sleep. After all, he said to himself, it is probably only insomnia. Many must have it.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

Source: A Clean Well Lighted Place

“Love is merely a madness; and, I tell you, deserves as well a dark house and a whip as madmen do; and the reason why they are not so punish'd and cured is that the lunacy is so
ordinary that the whippers are in love too.”

William Shakespeare As You Like It

Source: As You Like It

“Man, when he realizes that he is an object of comedy, does not laugh.”

Antonio Porchia (1885–1968) Italian Argentinian poet

El hombre, cuando sabe que es una cosa cómica, no ríe.
Voces (1943)

“A foreigner is a man who laughs at everything except jokes. He is perfectly entitled to laugh at anything, so long as he realises, in a reverent and religious spirit, that he himself is laughable.”

G. K. Chesterton book What I Saw in America

"Fads and Public Opinion" http://www.online-literature.com/chesterton/what-i-saw-in-america/10/ <br class="br">What I Saw in America (1922) <br class="br">Context: A foreigner is a man who laughs at everything except jokes. He is perfectly entitled to laugh at anything, so long as he realises, in a reverent and religious spirit, that he himself is laughable. I was a foreigner in America; and I can truly claim that the sense of my own laughable position never left me. But when the native and the foreigner have finished with seeing the fun of each other in things that are meant to be serious, they both approach the far more delicate and dangerous ground of things that are meant to be funny. The sense of humour is generally very national; perhaps that is why the internationalists are so careful to purge themselves of it. I had occasion during the war to consider the rights and wrongs of certain differences alleged to have arisen between the English and American soldiers at the front. And, rightly or wrongly, I came to the conclusion that they arose from the failure to understand when a foreigner is serious and when he is humorous. And it is in the very nature of the best sort of joke to be the worst sort of insult if it is not taken as a joke.

“Nations are as equal as so many madmen or drunkards.”

Fritz Leiber book The Big Time

The Big Time (1958)

“"I shall succeed!" he said to himself. So says the gambler; so says the great captain; but the three words that have been the salvation of some few, have been the ruin of many more.”

Honoré de Balzac book Le Pere Goriot

"Je réussirai!"
Le mot du joueur, du grand capitaine, mot fataliste qui perd plus d'hommes qu'il n'en sauve.
Part I.
Le Père Goriot (1835)

“Death isn't funny. Then why are there so many jokes about death? Jill, with us — us humans — death is so sad that we must laugh at it.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Stranger in a Strange Land

Source: Stranger in a Strange Land

“Only the mercenaries were here by choice. To Simon, the minds of men who would come to this of their own will were suddenly as incomprehensible as the thoughts of spiders or lizards—less so, even, for the small creatures of the earth almost always fled from danger. These were madmen, Simon realized, and that was the direst problem of the world: that madmen should be strong and unafraid, so that they could force their will on the weak and peace-loving. If God allowed such madness to be, Simon could not help thinking, then He was an old God who had lost His grip.”

Tad Williams (1957) novelist

Source: Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, To Green Angel Tower (1993), Part 1, Chapter 12, “Raven’s Dance” (pp. 392-393).

“A leader is one who, out of madness or goodness, volunteers to take upon himself the woe of the people. There are few men so foolish, hence the erratic quality of leadership in the world.”

John Updike (1932–2009) American novelist, poet, short story writer, art critic, and literary critic

"They Thought They Were Better" in TIME magazine (21 July 1980) http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,924295,00.html

“A man must sometimes laugh at himself or go mad,’ said he. ‘Few realize it. That is why there are so many madmen in the world.”

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Rafael Sabatini19

Related quotes

Related topics