New Orts #51

January 5 MMXXV

There is a hell of a distance between wisecracking and wit. Wit has truth in it; wise-cracking is simply calisthenics with words.
— Dorothy Parker

My way of joking is to tell the truth. It’s the funniest joke in the world.
— attributed to both George Bernard Shaw and Muhammad Ali

The pleasantest of all diversions is to sit alone under the lamp, a book spread out before you, and to make friends with people of a distant past you have never known.
— Kenkō, Essays in Idleness (1330-32)

No good work whatever can be perfect, and the demand for perfection is always a sign of a misunderstanding of the ends of art.
— John Ruskin, in The Stones of Venice; quoted in Michael Pollan, A Place of My Own, chapter 8