“The rewards for being sane may not be very many, but knowing what's funny is one of them.”

—  Kingsley Amis

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 rewards for being sane may not be very many, but knowing what's funny is one of them." by Kingsley Amis?
Kingsley Amis photo
Kingsley Amis 32
English novelist, poet, critic, teacher 1922–1995

Related quotes

Roger Ebert photo

“There are few lonelier sights than a good comedian being funny in a movie that doesn't know what funny is.”

Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/wedding-crashers-2005 of Wedding Crashers (14 July 2005)
Reviews, Two star reviews

Jon Stewart photo

“They said I wasn't being funny. And I said to them, "I know that, but tomorrow I will go back to being funny, and your show will still blow."”

Jon Stewart (1962) American political satirist, writer, television host, actor, media critic and stand-up comedian

Your Show Blows http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=120614&title=Your-Show-Blows/, October 18, 2004
Crossfire Appearance (2004)

Ovid photo

“Nor can one easily find among many thousands a single man who considers virtue its own reward. The very glory of a good deed, if it lacks reward, affects them not; unrewarded uprightness brings them regret. Nothing but profit is prized.”
Nec facile invenias multis in milibus unum, virtutem pretium qui putet esse sui. ipse decor, recte facti si praemia desint, non movet, et gratis paenitet esse probum. nil nisi quod prodest carum est.

Ovid book Epistulae ex Ponto

II, iii, 11-15; translation by Arthur Leslie Wheeler. Variant translation of gratis paenitet esse probum, in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 15th ed. (1980), p. 114: "It is annoying to be honest to no purpose."
Epistulae ex Ponto (Letters From the Black Sea)

Richelle Mead photo

“Rose,” he said, forcibly trying to keep a serious tone, “I can think of many words to describe you, sexy and hot being at the top of the list. You know what’s not on the list? Sane.”

Richelle Mead book Spirit Bound

Source: Spirit Bound

Wendell Berry photo

“Most of us are still too sane to piss in our own cistern, but we allow others to do so and we reward them for it.”

Wendell Berry (1934) author

"Compromise, Hell!" Orion magazine (November/December 2004) http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/147/.
Context: We Americans are not usually thought to be a submissive people, but of course we are. Why else would we allow our country to be destroyed? Why else would we be rewarding its destroyers? Why else would we all — by proxies we have given to greedy corporations and corrupt politicians — be participating in its destruction? Most of us are still too sane to piss in our own cistern, but we allow others to do so and we reward them for it. We reward them so well, in fact, that those who piss in our cistern are wealthier than the rest of us.
How do we submit? By not being radical enough. Or by not being thorough enough, which is the same thing.

Nathaniel Parker photo

“So many of the very funny things are very natural, we do them all every day. They’re just that little bit heightened, which is what makes you fall on the floor when you’re doing it. Sometimes we can’t finish a take because we’re laughing too much, and sometimes you see the cameraman chuckling and we have to do it again. Not having done many comedies, that must be the sign of a very funny script!”

Nathaniel Parker (1962) British actor

Interview with Nathaniel Parker https://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/mediapacks/mrsjones/nathaniel

Michelangelo Antonioni photo

“When a scene is being shot, it is very difficult to know what one wants it to say, and even if one does know, there is always a difference between what one has in mind and the result on film.”

Michelangelo Antonioni (1912–2007) Italian film director and screenwriter

Encountering Directors interview (1969)
Context: When a scene is being shot, it is very difficult to know what one wants it to say, and even if one does know, there is always a difference between what one has in mind and the result on film. I never think ahead of the shot I'm going to make the following day because if I did, I'd only produce a bad imitation of the original image in my mind. So what you see on the screen doesn't represent my exact meaning, but only my possibilities of expression, with all the limitations implied in that phrase. Perhaps the scene reveals my incapacity to do better; perhaps I felt subconsciously ironic toward it. But it is on film; the rest is up to you.

“The lack of freedom suffered by those who advise the powerful may of course be due to coercion or force. But the slavish behavior typical of such counselors may equally well be due to their basic condition of dependence and their understanding of what their clientage demands of them. As soon as they begin to ‘slide into a blind dependence upon one who has wealth and power’, they begin to desire ‘only to know his will’, and eventually ‘care not what injustice they do, if they may be rewarded’.”

Quentin Skinner (1940) British historian

(describing the view of Algernon Sidney) p. 93
Liberty Before Liberalism (1998)

Kent Hovind photo

“Yes, God may let us die, but He knows what He is doing! He will GREATLY reward those willing to die for Him.”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Source: What On Earth Is About To Happen… For Heaven’s Sake? (2013), p. 223

James Dickey photo

“Those that are hunted
Know this as their life,
Their reward: to walk
Under such trees in full knowledge
Of what is in glory above them,
And to feel no fear.”

James Dickey (1923–1997) American writer

The Heaven of Animals (l. 29–34).
The Whole Motion; Collected Poems, 1945-1992 (1992)

Related topics