“The human race has only one really effective weapon and that is laughter.”
Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist
“Judges of elegance and taste consider themselves as benefactors to the human race, whilst they are really only the interrupters of their pleasure”
Théorie des peines et des récompenses (1811); translation by Richard Smith, The Rationale of Reward, J. & H. L. Hunt, London, 1825, Bk. 3, Ch. 1
Context: Judges of elegance and taste consider themselves as benefactors to the human race, whilst they are really only the interrupters of their pleasure … There is no taste which deserves the epithet good, unless it be the taste for such employments which, to the pleasure actually produced by them, conjoin some contingent or future utility: there is no taste which deserves to be characterized as bad, unless it be a taste for some occupation which has mischievous tendency.
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Jeremy Bentham30
British philosopher, jurist, and social reformer 1748–1832Related quotes
“In fact, as a general thing, money-getters are the benefactors of our race.”
P.T. Barnum (1810–1891) American showman and businessman
Ch. 20: "Preserve your integrity" http://www.fourmilab.ch/etexts/www/barnum/moneygetting/moneygetting_chap21.html <br class="br">Art of Money Getting (1880)
Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist
Source: 1950s, Portraits from Memory and Other Essays (1956), p. 198
“To achieve harmony in bad taste is the height of elegance.”
Jean Genet book The Thief's Journal
The Thief's Journal (1949)
“For the judging of contemporary literature the only test is one's personal taste.”
Ford Madox Ford (1873–1939) English writer and publisher
The March of Literature (1939)
Context: For the judging of contemporary literature the only test is one's personal taste. If you much like a new book, you must call it literature even though you find no other soul to agree with you, and if you dislike a book you must declare that it is not literature though a million voices should shout you that you are wrong. The ultimate decision will be made by Time.
“All human race, from China to Peru,
Pleasure, howe’er disguis’d by art, pursue.”
Thomas Warton (1728–1790) English literary historian, critic, poet
Universal Love of Pleasure, Reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919). Compare: "Let observation with extensive view/ Survey mankind, from China to Peru", Samuel Johnson, Vanity of Human Wishes, Line 1.
Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues (1715–1747) French writer, a moralist
Source: Reflections and Maxims (1746), p. 189.