
"On Wit and Humour"
Lectures on the English Comic Writers (1819)
As quoted in 1,911 Best Things Anybody Ever Said (1988) by Robert Byrne
"On Wit and Humour"
Lectures on the English Comic Writers (1819)
“Man is the animal who weeps and laughs — and writes.”
If the first Prometheus brought fire from heaven in a fennel-stalk, the last will take it back — in a book.
The Pleasures of Literature (1938), p. 17
Of the Origin and Progress of Language (Edinburgh and London: J. Balfour and T. Cadell, 2nd ed., 1774), Vol. I, Book II, Ch. II, pp. 224-225 https://archive.org/stream/originandprogre01conggoog#page/n251/mode/2up.
Attributed to Aristotle in Bernhoff A. Dahl, Optimize Your Life! http://books.google.gr/books?id=B1Z2XP_DamQC&dq=, Trionics International Inc., 2005, p. 111.
Disputed
“The animals laugh from the dark of the wilderness.”
Lifted or The Story Is in the Soil, Keep Your Ear to the Ground (2002)
“Man is the Only Animal that Blushes. Or needs to.”
Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar, Ch. XXVII
Following the Equator (1897)
The Meaning of Immortality in Human Experience (1957), p. 5.
Context: Man is the only animal that contemplates death, and also the only animal that shows any sign of doubt of its finality. This does not mean that he doubts it as a future fact. He accepts his own death, with that of others, as inevitable; plans for it; provides for the time when he shall be out of the picture. Yet, not less today than formerly, he confronts this fact with a certain incredulity regarding the scope of its destruction.