you ask. "Well, I'll get more," he says. Just as at cricket, you get more runs. There's no use in the runs, but to get more of them than other people is the game. So all that great foul city of London there, — rattling, growling, smoking, stinking, — a ghastly heap of fermenting brickwork, pouring out poison at every pore, — you fancy it is a city of work? Not a street of it! It is a great city of play; very nasty play and very hard play, but still play.
The Crown of Wild Olive, lecture I: Work, sections 23-24 (1866)
“I simply asked him if he was making any money. Is that a criticism?”
Willy
Death of a Salesman (1949)
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Arthur Miller 147
playwright from the United States 1915–2005Related quotes
As quoted in "Debt debate veers with Greek polls close" (UPI), 2 June 2012. http://www.upi.com/Business_News/2012/06/02/Debt-debate-veers-with-Greek-polls-close/UPI-30991338654675/
“All I ask is the chance to prove that money can't make me happy.”
About his son in [Dawar, Ramesh, Bollywood: Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow, http://books.google.com/books?id=TO6Fmi8FraUC&pg=RA1-PT24, 1 January 2006, Star Publications, 978-1-905863-01-3, 135]
“I'd buy him a drink, but I don't know if I'd loan him any money.”
When asked what he would say about the man who wrote Neuromancer.
No Maps for These Territories (2000)
“It takes brains to make money, but any dam fool can inherit. P. S.: I never inherited any money.”
Source: A Thousand & One Epigrams: Selected from the Writings of Elbert Hubbard (1911), p. 10.
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.
“My friend has a baby. I’m recording all the noises he makes so later I can ask him what he meant.”