A Quote by Ambrose Bierce

A popular character in old Italian plays, who imitated with ludicrous incompetence the "buffone", or clown, and was therefore the ape of an ape; for the clown himself imitated the serious characters of the play.

Ambrose Bierce

Quote Topics

Ape Character Characters Clown Himself Incompetence Italian Ludicrous Old Play Plays Popular Serious Therefore

Quote Author

Ambrose Bierce
American - Journalist
June 24, 1842 - 1914

ZANY, n. A popular character in old Italian plays, who imitated with ludicrous incompetence the _buffone_, or clown, and was therefore the ape of an ape; for the clown himself imitated the serious characters of the play. The zany was progenitor to the specialist in humor, as we to-day have the unhappiness to know him. In the zany we see an example of creation; in the humorist, of transmission. Another excellent specimen of the modern zany is the curate, who apes the rector, who apes the bishop, who apes the archbishop, who apes the devil.

Ambrose Bierce

Be a clown , be a clown, All the world loves a clown. Act the fool , play the calf, And you'll always have the last laugh .

Cole Porter

Caesar [from the Rise of the Planet of the Apes] was brought up with human beings and because of the drug he had pretty much grown up with his whole life, he felt like an outsider, he felt trapped in an ape's body but he didn't really feel like an ape and that was my way into the character. So he's always had this duality playing him from an infant all the way to now as a fifty-five year old ape.

Andy Serkis

What I loved about wrestling was just being foolish, so I studied clown. I studied clown. I studied the art of clown. I actually did my thesis on clown.

Becky Lynch

For me, honestly, the term 'role model' means for someone to be imitated, and I don't feel like anyone is to be imitated.

Winnie Harlow

I'm more of a clown, a tragic clown. Yeah. I just like humor to come out of characters.

Amy Sedaris

I took a couple of classes in clowning, but that was more like Lucille Ball kind of slapstick, not Ringling Brothers. But we had to do things silently, and the teacher would do this running commentary. 'Does this make Clown sad? Oh, Clown doesn't like that, does Clown?' Always 'Clown.' Never a name.

June Diane Raphael

Man ceased to be an ape, vanquished the ape, on the day the first book was written.

Arthur Helps

One ape's hallucination is another ape's religious experience - it just depends on which one’s god module is overactive at the time.

Charles Stross

People are always saying that I must have been the class clown, with all these voices. No, I was way too shy to be the class clown; I was a class clown's writer.

Tom Kenny

I was a class clown. My father was a class clown. My son has been a class clown, and it sort of ran in the family.

Robert Klein

I really wanted people to pay attention to me and like me. And the class clown thing, you know? There's a weird desperation to the class clown when you really investigate it. Why are they trying to be the clown so much? They're filling some kind of hole.

Jack Black

Yet man does recognise himself [as an animal]. But I ask you and the whole world for a generic differentia between man and ape which conforms to the principles of natural history, I certainly know of none... If I were to call man ape or vice versa, I should bring down all the theologians on my head. But perhaps I should still do it according to the rules of science.

Carl Linnaeus

Clowning is a trick to get love close. I can hug 99 percent of people in the first second of contact if I'm in my clown character. The clown assumes your humanity. It assumes that, whatever trauma you've had, you can still love yourself.