Saturday, October 18, 2008

Aristotle and Piet Hein

Humor is the only test of gravity, and gravity of humor; for a subject which will not bear raillery is suspicious, and a jest which will not bear serious examination is false wit.
-- Aristotle

Den, som kun tar spøg for spøg
og alvor kun alvorligt,
han og hun har faktisk fattet
begge dele dårligt.
- Piet Hein

(He who sees in jest only jest, and only seriousness in the serious, he has understood both things pretty poorly.) (I wish I could find Piet's own translation, he surely did it better.)

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To punish me for my contempt for authority, fate made me an authority myself.
-- Albert Einstein

4 comments:

Unknown said...

I found another translation here:
http://chat.carleton.ca/~tcstewar/grooks/grooks.html
(look for "The Eternal Twins")

Thanks, I did not know Piet Hein, and quite like his grooks :)

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

Thanks, dude, you rock!

Pascal [P-04referent] said...

Those who've known me long enough will recall this quote by me: "Humour is something I always take very seriously."
I'm not surprised to find out that others "long ago, in a distant land" have said it before me.

But I still haven't found the perfect balance of serious humour and fun gravity on my blog.
Probably explains why I update so rarely. It's far more work than "Listening to Black Eyed Peas, mood meditative, eating lasagna leftovers, transit is regular, my GF was disturbingly evasive on the phone today, here's the daily photo of my empty backyard, hm I think it's going to be time to mow the lawn, and don't you think the world is more and more totally fucked up since Michael Jackson moved to the Gulf?"

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

There's a third possibility: just write about whatever grabs your interest that day, if it has a little bit of broad appeal.