Tag: Humor

• February 6, 2012

  On death scenes and final words

  Montaigne muses in an early essay about the possibility that the true test of a life may be how well we act in our final scene. How well have we prepared ourselves for death? How do we face it? Do we regard it with equanimity? With cowardice? With ennui? Today, we rarely face it at…
• November 26, 2011

  On good humor and good thinking

  1 The story goes that Plato is giving a lecture in the Academy on the essence of man. “What is man?” he asks. His pupils listen intently. “Man,” he answers, “is a featherless biped.” It is these properties that, conjointly, distinguish us from the mere brutes. At which point, Diogenes of Sinope bursts into the…