HUMOUR ABOUT LIFE

FUNNY LIFE

CONTRADICTIONS 
Funny life

Our lives are full of contradictions. That’s why our lives are often a target for our sarcasm and humour.

Life is just one damned thing after another.
Elbert Hubbard, 1856-1915, American writer in Philistine 

 
Men deal with life, as children with their play
Who first misuse, then cast their toys away.
William Cowper, 1731-1800, English poet, Hope

There are three great events in our lives: birth, life and death. Of birth we have no conscience; with death, we suffer; and, concerning life, we forget to live it.
Jean de La Bruyère, 1645-1596, French moralist, Les caractères où les moeurs de ce siècle.

When you don’t have any money, the problem is food. When you have money, it’s sex. When you have both, is health.
J. P. Donleavy, American writer, A Fairy Tale of New York

We don’t live as we wish, but as we can.
Terence, 190-159 a.C., Roman poet, The Lady of Andros 

Life is half spent before we know what it is.
George Herbert, 1593-1633, Scotish poet, Jacula Prudentum  

How many lives we live in one,
And how much less than one, in all.
Alice Cary, 1820-1871, American poet, Life's Mysteries. 

However many ways there may be of being alive, it is certain that there are vastly more ways of being dead, or rather not alive.
Richard Dawkins, English biologist The Blind Watchmaker

Experience is the name so many people give to their mistakes.
Oscar Wilde, 1854-1900, Irish writer, Lady Windermere’s Fan

Happiness is good health and a bad memory.
Attributed to Ingrid Bergman, 1917-1982, Swedish actress

All the things I really like to do are either illegal, immoral, or fattening.
Alexander Woolcott, 1887-1943, American essayist, cited in The Algonquin Wits, de  R. E. Drennan

I generally avoid temptation unless I can't resist it.
Mae West, 1892-1980, American actress, in the film She Done Him Wrong

The good die young - because they see it's no use living if you've got to be good.
Unknown author

Life is a sexually transmitted disease.
Unknown author

Live every day as if it were your last, because one of these days you will be right.
Unknown author

What’s life unless an escape to death, and what’s death unless an escape to life?
Unknown author

Death is to stop sinning suddenly.
Unknown author

Comments
To laugh at ourselves

 

Death is also a theme for our humour
Funny life

The fear of death is the most unjustified of all fears, for there's no risk of accident for someone who's dead.
Albert Einstein, 1879-1955, German-American physicist, em EinsteinQuotes.html, rescomp.stanford.edu, by Kevin Harris

A man’s dying is more a survivor’s affair than his own.
Thomas Mann, 1875-1955, German writer, The Magic Mountain 

The fact of having been born is a bad augury for immortality.
George Santayana, 1863-1952, Spanish-American philosopher, Reason in Religion  

There is no cure for birth and death unless to enjoy the interval.
George Santayana, 1863-1952, Spanish-American philosopher, Soliloquies in England 

We should always have our boots on, and be ready to leave.
Montaigne, 1533-1592, French philosopher, Essais

Comments
To laugh at ourselves



LIFE IS A CABARET (Fred Ebb and John Kander)
Funny life

Life has a theatrical side. «Life is a cabaret, old chum. Come to the cabaret»

What good is sitting alone in your room

Come hear the music play

Life is a cabaret, old chum

Come to the cabaret.

Put down the knitting, the book and the broom

It's time for a holiday

Life is a cabaret, old chum

Come to the cabaret.

   Come taste the wine, come hear the band

   Come blow your horn, start celebrating

   Right this way, your table's waiting.

What good's permitting some prophet of doom

To wipe every smile away

Life is a cabaret, old chum

So come to the cabaret.

I used to have a girlfriend known as Elsie

With whom I shared four sordid rooms in Chelsea

She wasn't what you'd call a blushing flower

As a matter of fact she rented by the hour.

The day she died the neighbours came to snicker

Well that's what comes from too much pills and liquor

But when I saw her laid out like a queen

She was the happiest corpse I'd ever seen.

I think of Elsie to this very day

I remember how she'd turn to me and say:

What good is sitting all alone in your room

Come hear the music play

Life is a cabaret, old chum

Come to the cabaret.

   And as for me, and as for me

   I made my mind up back in Chelsea

   When I go I am going like Elsie.

Start by admitting from cradle to tomb

It isn't that long a stay

Life is a cabaret, old chum

It's only a cabaret old chum

And I love a cabaret.
Fred Ebb and John Kander, American authors, in the musical Cabaret, 1965   

Comments
To laugh at ourselves
 
See also:
Poems about life
Life and Love
Life and friendship
Happiness
Philosophies of Life
The Human Beings
Life Best Years
Life is Dream

Back to Top - Funny Life

Back to Home Page - Meanings of life

 

 

 
 

 

TO LAUGH AT OURSELVES

Above:
Charlie Chaplin. who allegedly commented about life: «In the end, everything is a gag».

Commentary
To laugh at ourselves

To laugh at others, and at their mistakes and contradictions can be a bad sign – a sign of insensibility and roughness. But to laugh at ourselves and at the contradictions inevitably present in our own lives can be a sign of sensibility and openness.

Those who are not able to laugh at themselves, those who are not able to see a certain human comedy and how it deserves to be laughed at loudly, are too wounded, or too old, or can be rightly suspicious of having a primary mind. As Compte-Sponville states, «whoever makes of himself a statue – be it for the glory of man or the sake of the law – cannot complain when he is suspected of being hard-hearted or assuming a pose».

We can’t laugh at everything or laugh permanently, because life has a true hard and tragic element. And also because convictions – in that they are authentic and humble – deserve our respect, and the respect of others.

But there are moments when laughter at life is salutary – moments that can correspond to our most lucid moments.

We all are fragile beings, subject to the whim of luck, to the limitations of our brains, to fear and pain. All these cause a certain human appetite for myths, sins, illusions, chimerical behaviour, incoherence between what is said and what is done. These features introduce and feed contradiction into our lives. Even the most coherent and lucid of us can’t help living the contradiction. We all live. The difference is only a matter of degree.

And that’s why humour about our lives is so pertinent. To face life seriously, to meditate over its meaning and nature, is, ultimately, also to be able to laugh at it. To laugh at life at the right moments can be a sign of mental health… and a sign of wisdom.