Max Eastman

“Humor is the instinct for taking pain playfully.”

“Dogs laugh, but they laugh with their tails.”

“Emotion is the surest arbiter of a poetic choice, and it is the priest of all supreme unions in the mind.”

“Classic art was the art of necessity: modern romantic art bears the stamp of caprice and chance.”

“People who demand neutrality in any situation are usually not neutral but in favor of the status quo.”

“A joke is not a thing but a process, a trick you play on the listener's mind. You start him off toward a plausible goal, and then by a sudden twist you land him nowhere at all or just where...”