“The real marriage of true minds is for any two people to possess a sense of humor or irony pitched in exactly the same key, so that their joint glances on any subject cross like interarching searchlights.”

—  Edith Wharton

Source: A Backward Glance

Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "The real marriage of true minds is for any two people to possess a sense of humor or irony pitched in exactly the same …" by Edith Wharton?
Edith Wharton photo
Edith Wharton 103
American novelist, short story writer, designer 1862–1937

Related quotes

Tom Robbins photo

“A sense of humor, properly developed, is superior to any religion so far devised.”

Tom Robbins book Jitterbug Perfume

Source: Jitterbug Perfume (1984)

Robert Frost photo

“I own any form of humor shows fear and inferiority. Irony is simply a kind of guardedness. So is a twinkle. It keeps the reader from criticism.”

Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet

Letter http://books.google.com/books?id=R8ksAAAAIAAJ&q=%22I+own+any+form+of+humor+shows+fear+and+inferiority+Irony+is+simply+a+kind+of+guardedness+So+is+a+twinkle+It+keeps+the+reader+from+criticism%22+%22Humor+is+the+most+engaging+cowardice%22&pg=PA166#v=onepage to Louis Untermeyer (10 March 1924)
General sources
Context: I own any form of humor shows fear and inferiority. Irony is simply a kind of guardedness. So is a twinkle. It keeps the reader from criticism. Whittier, when he shows any style at all is probably a greater person than Longfellow as he is lifted priestlike above consideration of the scornful. Belief is better than anything else, and it is best when rapt, above paying its respects to anybody's doubt whatsoever. At bottom the world isn't a joke. We only joke about it to avoid an issue with someone to let someone know that we know he's there with his questions: to disarm him by seeming to have heard and done justice to this side of the standing argument. Humor is the most engaging cowardice.

George Holmes Howison photo

““The achievement of this task depends on attaining to the true distinction, the real relation, between the two orders of existence which to ordinary and uncritical reflexion — usual common-sense — appear as two substances, so called, or species of substance, and are named "mind" and "matter." What is to be shown is, that this common-sense contrast, read off as a hard-and-fast dualism, is not intelligibly interpretable except as the distinction between two aspects of one and the same total nature in the beings that possess it””

George Holmes Howison (1834–1916) American philosopher

Source: The Limits of Evolution, and Other Essays, Illustrating the Metaphysical Theory of Personal Ideaalism (1905), Preface to Second Edition, p.xlvi

Rick Santorum photo

“I can say that marriage is — Marriage existed before governments existed. This is a napkin. I can call this napkin a "paper towel". But it is a napkin. Why? Because it is what it is. Right? You can call it whatever you want, but it doesn't change the character of what it is. Sort of the metaphysical. Right? So people come out and say marriage is something else. A marriage is the marriage of five people. Maybe five, ten, twenty. Marriage can be between fathers and daughters, marriage can be between any two people, any four people, any ten people, it can be any kind of relationship, and we can call it "marriage."”

Rick Santorum (1958) American politician

But it doesn't make it marriage. Why? Because there are certain things, certain qualities, that attach to the definition of what marriage is.
Rick Santorum:Obama's health care "will rob America of its soul"
2011-08-08
Politics Blog
San Francisco Chronicle
Joe
Garofoli
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/nov05election/detail?entry_id=94912
2011-08-28

Abraham Lincoln photo

“It has been said that one bad general is better than two good ones, and the saying is true if taken to mean no more than that an army is better directed by a single mind, though inferior, than by two superior ones at variance and cross-purposes with each other. And the same is true in all joint operations wherein those engaged can have none but a common end in view and can differ only as to the choice of means.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

1860s, First State of the Union address (1861)
Context: It has been said that one bad general is better than two good ones, and the saying is true if taken to mean no more than that an army is better directed by a single mind, though inferior, than by two superior ones at variance and cross-purposes with each other. And the same is true in all joint operations wherein those engaged can have none but a common end in view and can differ only as to the choice of means. In a storm at sea no one on board can wish the ship to sink, and yet not unfrequently all go down together because too many will direct and no single mind can be allowed to control.

“Common sense and a sense of humor are the same thing, moving at different speeds. A sense of humor is just common sense, dancing.”

Clive James (1939–2019) Australian author, critic, broadcaster, poet, translator and memoirist
Nicholas Sparks photo

“A good marriage, like any partnership, meant subordinating one's own needs to that of the other's, in the expectation that the other will do the same.”

Nicholas Sparks book True Believer

Source: True Believer

Neal Stephenson photo

“He had a sense of irony that ruled his life, made it impossible for him to use his considerable brains in any kind of serious job. Kind of like me.”

Neal Stephenson book Zodiac

Source: Zodiac (1988), Chapter 22

James Patterson photo

“guess they forgot to program us with any respect for authority."

"well, I have a highly developed sense of irony.”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Source: Saving the World and Other Extreme Sports

Charles Sanders Peirce photo

“Any character or proposition either concerns one subject, two subjects, or a plurality of subjects.”

Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914) American philosopher, logician, mathematician, and scientist

On The Algebra of Logic (1885)
Context: Any character or proposition either concerns one subject, two subjects, or a plurality of subjects. For example, one particle has mass, two particles attract one another, a particle revolves about the line joining two others. A fact concerning two subjects is a dual character or relation; but a relation which is a mere combination of two independent facts concerning the two subjects may be called degenerate, just as two lines are called a degenerate conic. In like manner a plural character or conjoint relation is to be called degenerate if it is a mere compound of dual characters.
A sign is in a conjoint relation to the thing denoted and to the mind. If this triple relation is not of a degenerate species, the sign is related to its object only in consequence of a mental association, and depends upon a habit. Such signs are always abstract and general, because habits are general rules to which the organism has become subjected. They are, for the most part, conventional or arbitrary. They include all general words, the main body of speech, and any mode of conveying a judgment. For the sake of brevity I will call them tokens.

Related topics