“There are two insults which no human being will endure: The assertion that he hasn't a sense of humor, and the doubly impertinent assertion that he has never known trouble.”

—  Sinclair Lewis, book Main Street

Main Street (1920)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "There are two insults which no human being will endure: The assertion that he hasn't a sense of humor, and the doubly i…" by Sinclair Lewis?
Sinclair Lewis photo
Sinclair Lewis136
American novelist, short-story writer, and playwright 1885–1951

Related quotes

John Romilly, 1st Baron Romilly photo

“If a man who makes to another person, upon a solemn occasion, an assertion, upon which that person acts, he lies under an obligation to make good his assertion.”

John Romilly, 1st Baron Romilly (1802–1874) English Whig politician and judge

In Re Ward (1862), 31 Beav. 7.

G. I. Gurdjieff photo

“Therefore if his actions are opposed to those which are demanded by a given religion he cannot assert that he belongs to that religion.”

G. I. Gurdjieff (1866–1949) influential spiritual teacher, Armenian philosopher, composer and writer

In Search of the Miraculous (1949)
Context: RELIGION IS DOING; a man does not merely think his religion or feel it, he lives his religion as much as he is able, otherwise it is not religion but fantasy or philosophy. Whether he likes it or not he shows his attitude towards religion by his actions and he can show his attitude only by his actions. Therefore if his actions are opposed to those which are demanded by a given religion he cannot assert that he belongs to that religion.

Jerry Seinfeld photo

“God has no rhyme or reason to who he gives a sense of humor to.”

Jerry Seinfeld (1954) American comedian and actor

Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee (2012 — Present), Season 2 (2013)

Aristotle photo

“[T]he ancient philosophers… all of them assert that the elements, and those things which are called by them principles, are contraries, though they establish them without reason, as if they were compelled to assert this by truth itself. They differ, however… that some of them assume prior, and others posterior principles; and some of them things more known according to reason, but others such as are more known according to sense: for some establish the hot and the cold, others the moist and the dry, others the odd and the even, and others strife and friendship, as the causes of generation. …in a certain respect they assert the same things, and speak differently from each other. They assert different things… but the same things, so far as they speak analogously. For they assume principles from the same co-ordination; since, of contraries, some contain, and others are contained.”

Aristotle book Physics

Book I, Ch. VI, pp. 57-59.
Physics

“Human beings can always be relied upon to assert, with vigor, their God-given right to be stupid.”

Dean Koontz book Seize the Night

Seize the Night (1999)

Albert Einstein photo

“The true value of a human being is determined primarily by the measure and the sense in which he has attained to liberation from the self.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

1940s, The World As I See It (1949)

Henry Miller photo

“He saw the humorous aspect of everything, which is the real test of the tragic sense.”

Henry Miller book The Colossus of Maroussi

"He" is Miller's friend George Katsimbalis, the "Colossus" of the book's title.
The Colossus of Maroussi (1941)

Michael Polanyi photo

“Whitehead and Russell… translate \vdash p imples q into the words 'it is asserted that p implies q'. But the phrase 'it is asserted' suggests an impersonal happening of assertions: 'it is asserted' as 'it is raining' or 'it happens'. The value of the assertion sign is lost if we allow ourselves to revert in our verbal translation of it to the muddle of a declaratory sentence which asserts itself or is impersonally asserted by nobody in particular.”

Michael Polanyi (1891–1976) Hungarian-British polymath

Source: Personal Knowledge (1958), p. 28

Related topics