Significant Moments: The Sense of Humor

     Oh, that is my salvation, this ability to convert the most serious of things into nonsense in a flash—it has always kept me from going over the brink. Thus, for example, in the midst of my composing today, I . . .
Cosima Wagner's Diaries (Tuesday, August 6, 1878).
       . . . found it quite impossible to compose . . .
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Elective Affinities.
         . . . a single modulation or turn.
Cosima Wagner's Diaries (Friday, April 12, 1878).
     He took up his pen several times and laid it down again because he could not make up his mind what he ought to . . .
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Elective Affinities.
       . . . write and . . .
Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court.
         . . . rose up and wandered . . .
Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.
           . . . through the rooms and now and again . . .
Cosima Wagner’s Diaries (Tuesday, October 3, 1882).
             . . . wrote . . .
Albert Bigelow Paine, Mark Twain: A Biography. 1907-1910.
. . . down a joke . . .
Cosima Wagner’s Diaries (Tuesday, October 3, 1882).
             . . . but was . . .
Albert Bigelow Paine, Mark Twain: A Biography. 1907-1910.
                  . . .indisposed.
_______________________________

http://twitter.com/#!/garfreed