And another thing about German symphonic development. I tell you, our cold kvass soup is a horror to the Germans, and yet we eat it with pleasure. And their cold cherry soup is a horror to us, and yet it sends a German into ecstacy. In short, symphonic development is just like German philosophy and soup-all worked out and systematized. When a German thinks, he reasons his way to a conclusion. Our Russian brother, on the other hand, starts with a conclusion and then might amuse himself with some reasoning.
When an artist leaves his work to amuse people, he loses his time and their respect. If people are to be amused by artists, it must be by employing them in their legitimate occupation.
The main obligation is to amuse yourself.
Teach to the young, men's enduring truths, and let the learned amuse themselves with their passing errors.
I believe your friends Misters Fred and George Weasley were responsible for trying to send you a toilet seat. No doubt they thought it would amuse you.
It now costs more to amuse a child than it once did to educate his father.
If I go to Germany, I learn something in addition. The German television is very precise and respectable. One has never stress. In Italy it is more dynamic. But I amuse myself madly in both countries.
When I was young I longed to write a great novel that should win me fame. Now that I am getting old my first book is written to amuse children.
Science can amuse and fascinate us all, but it is engineering that changes the world.
To impress others we must be earnest; to amuse them, it is only necessary to be kindly and fanciful.
People in general do not willingly read if they have anything else to amuse them.
We cherish our friends not for their ability to amuse us, but for ours to amuse them.
May your trails be dim, lonesome, stony, narrow, winding and only slightly uphill. May the wind bring rain for the slickrock potholes fourteen miles on the other side of yonder blue ridge. May God's dog serenade your campfire, may the rattlesnake and the screech owl amuse your reverie, may the Great Sun dazzle your eyes by day and the Great Bear watch over you by night.
What people really want is not to make something funny, but to make something amusing - which, in many ways, is the opposite of funny. To amuse someone is to eliminate discomfort and awkwardness, kind of like a massage for the brain, while to be funny is to point out awkwardness and discomfort. Everyone thinks they want funny, but they really want amusement.
It is doing some service to humanity, to amuse innocently. They know but little of society who think we can bear to be always employed, either in duties or meditation, without relaxation.
If people thought more, we'd all have less to amuse us.
