DIVINE HUMOUR

'"Father Peregrine, won't you ever be serious?"

"Not until the good Lord is. Oh don't look so terribly shocked, please. The Lord is not serious. In fact, it is a little hard to know what else He is except loving. And love has a lot to do with humour, doesn't it? For you cannot love someone unless you put up with him, can  you? And you cannot put up with someone constantly unless you can laugh at him. Isn't that true? And certainly we are ridiculous little animals wallowing in the fudge-bowl, and God must love us all the more because we appeal to his humour." 

"I never thought of God as humorous," said Father Stone. 

"The Creator of the platypus, the camel, the ostrich, and man? Oh, come now!" Father Peregrine laughed.' 

Ray Bradbury, The Martian Chronicles, p.153. 

THE LOVE OF TEASING

'I can, when I am in the mood, make her laugh, particularly at herself, which is a kind of love, because something in her has been recognized.' 

Hanif Kureishi, Intimacy, p.31. 

LAUGHTER

'...a good laugh is a mighty good thing, and rather too scarce a good thing; the more's the pity. So, if any one man, in his own proper person, afford stuff for a good joke to anybody, let him not be backward, but let him cheerfully allow himself to spend or be spent in that way. And the man that has anything bountifully laughable about him, be sure there is more in that man than you perhaps think for.'

Herman Melleville, Moby Dick, p.33.

LAUGHTER & HUMILTY

'Laughter is a divine gift to the human who is humble. A proud man cannot laugh because he must watch his dignity; he cannot give himself over to the rocking and rolling of his belly. But a poor and happy man laughs heartily because he gives no serious attention to his ego.'

Terry Lindvall in CJ Mahaney, Humility: True Greatness, p.94.