“Although the mutual laughter may seem six of one and half-a-dozen of the other, it is not. The Christian is profoundly mad merely by the standards of the world. To the world the wicked seem wise, but are mad in the sight of God. The Christian is touched by the Infinite and will not only have the last laugh at the end of time: even now he laughs more insanely than the worldlings.”
Source: Laughter at the Foot of the Cross (1998), p. 73
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Michael Andrew Screech3
1926–2018Related quotes
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Source: The Humans
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This is the opening line of the novel. Sabatini used it as his epitaph.
Variant: He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad. And that was all his patrimony.
Source: Scaramouche (1921), Ch. I: "The Republican"
Penny Lernoux (1940–1989) American writer and journalist
Cry of The People (1977).
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Our Man in Havana (1958)
“It all seemed like madness, but was madness anything other than desperation blended with hope?”
Lawrence M. Schoen (1959) American writer and klingonist
Source: Barsk: The Elephants' Graveyard (2015), Chapter 29, “Choice and Sacrifice” (p. 270)
Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher
1840s, Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840), The Hero as Poet
“He seems to me to be equal to a god, he, if it may be, seems to surpass the very gods, who sitting opposite thee again and again gazes at thee and hears thee sweetly laughing.”
Ille mi par esse Deo videtur,
ille, si fas est, superare Divos,
qui sedens adversus identidem te
spectat et audit
dulce ridentem.
Gaio Valerio Catullo list of poems by Catullus
LI, lines 1–5. Cf. Sappho 31.
Carmina