A Quote by Edwin Percy Whipple

Mirth is a Proteus, changing its shape and manner with the thousand diversities of individual character, from the most superfluous gayety to the deepest, moat earnest humor.
The #? Divine incarnates only in the individual -He or It overshadows the group. The supreme responsibility always lies with the individual. At the exact moment, in the most definite manner Destiny acts and speaks though the individual.
Good-humor is a state between gayety and unconcern,--the act or emanation of a mind at leisure to regard the gratification of another.
Gayety is to good-humor as perfumes to vegetable fragrance: the one overpowers weak spirits; the other recreates and revives them.
Humor implies a sure conception of the beautiful, the majestic and he true, by whose light it surveys and shape s their opposites. It is a humane influence, softening with mirth the ragged inequities of existence, prompting tolerant views of life, bridging over the space which separates the lofty from the lowly, the great from the humble.
Most of the appearance of mirth in the world is not mirth, it is art. The wounded spirit is not seen, but walks under a disguise.
I have built a moat around myself, along with ways over that moat so that people can ask questions.
Childbearing is the most consistent of human events. Male and female alike, we have all been gestated inside a woman's body. As a phenomenon, childbearing is seemingly eternal and universal, yet like no other it highlights the gender divide, the singularity of individual experience and sociocultural diversities.
I can remember the times when I started including humor in novels that were suspenseful. I was told you can't do that because you can't keep the audience in suspense if they're laughing. My attitude was, if the character has a sense of humor, then that makes the character more real because that's how we deal with the vicissitudes of life, we deal with it through humor.
There are two men in Tolstoy. He is a mystic and he is also a realist. He is addicted to the practice of a pietism that for all its sincerity is nothing if not vague and sentimental; and he is the most acute and dispassionate of observers, the most profound and earnest student of character and emotion.
Mankind must work continually to produce individual great human beings - this and nothing else is the task... for the question is this : How can your life, the individual life, retain the highest value, the deepest significance? Only by living for the good of the rarest and most valuable specimens.
I believe in the fact that to portray a character convincingly, you need to live that character, own that character. You have to be earnest with every line that you deliver. However, it doesn't mean that you have to cut off your true self.
[T]he first transactions of a nation, like those of an individual upon his first entrance into life make the deepest impression, and are to form the leading traits in its character.
The great reason why we have so little good preaching is that we have so little piety. To be eloquent one must be in earnest; he must not only act as if he were in earnest, or try to be in earnest, but be in earnest.
I'm always in this shape, that shape, whatever shape you like the most. I am always in various stages of shapes. If the woman needs to be more soft I'll gain weight and then I'll lose weight for another film that I did where I wanted her to be more wiry. I enjoy using my body as something that helps me get to a character.
The soul, when accustomed to superfluous things, acquires a strong habit of desiring things which are neither necessary for the preservation of the individual nor for that of the species. This desire is without limit, whilst those which are necessary are few in number and restricted within certain limits; but what is superfluous is without end.
I like it to fit my individual body shape, and I encourage other women to find what works for their body shape and not necessarily follow trends. But what is it that works for you as an individual, and what brings out the best in you, and what can you have fun with and feel really good about.
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