Incongruity Quotes

• Incongruity is the mainspring of laughter.

  Max Beerbohm

  Happiness, Laughter, Joy

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• The cause of laughter is simply the sudden perception of the incongruity between a concept and the real project.

  Arthur Schopenhauer

  Laughter, Philosophy, Real

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• It is only when you realize that you are mortal and yet immortal simultaneously that you begin to realize that the beautiful incongruities of existence aren't incongruous at all, but rather perfect.

  Frederick Lenz

  Beautiful, Wisdom, Buddhism

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• To string incongruities and absurdities together in a wandering and sometimes purposeless way, and seem innocently unaware that they are absurdities, is the basis of the American art, if my position is correct.

  Mark Twain

  Art, Writing, Together

  Mark Twain (2016). “The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories”, p.179, Xist Publishing

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• Faith is the final triumph over incongruity, the final assertion of the meaningfulness of existence.

  Reinhold Niebuhr

  Triumph, Finals, Existence

  Reinhold Niebuhr, (2013). “Discerning the Signs of the Times - Sermons for Today and Tomorrow”, p.83, Read Books Ltd

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• Faith handles the ultimate incongruities of life, humor handles the more immediate ones.

  William Sloane Coffin

  Life Humor, Handle, Ultimate

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• Ingenuity and incongruity always cheer me up.

  Terry Pratchett

  Cheer, Cheer Me Up, Ingenuity

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

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• The final wisdom of life requires not the annulment of incongruity but the achievement of serenity within and above it.

  Reinhold Niebuhr

  Moving On, Wisdom, Achievement

  Reinhold Niebuhr (2010). “The Irony of American History”, p.63, University of Chicago Press

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• It is better to be a fool than to be dead. It is better to emit a scream in the shape of a theory than to be entirely insensible to the jars and incongruities of life and take everything as it comes in a forlorn stupidity. Some people swallow the universe like a pill; they travel on through the world, like smiling images pushed from behind. For God's sake give me the young man who has brains enough to make a fool of himself!

  Robert Louis Stevenson

  Men, People, Giving

  Virginibus Puerisque "Crabbed Age and Youth" (1881)

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• Wit is the fetching of congruity out of incongruity.

  Joseph Addison

  Wit

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• Worldly faces never look so worldly as at a funeral. They have the same effect of grating incongruity as the sound of a coarse voice breaking the solemn silence of night.

  George Eliot

  Night, Voice, Silence

  George Eliot (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of George Eliot (Illustrated)”, p.3820, Delphi Classics

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• Grace is the absence of everything that indicates pain or difficulty, hesitation or incongruity.

  William Hazlitt

  Life, Success, Pain

  William Hazlitt (1871). “The Round Table. A collection of Essays ... By W. H. and Leigh Hunt”, p.101

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• People will not follow a leader with moral incongruities for long. Every time you compromise character you compromise leadership. The foundation of firm leadership is character.

  Bill Hybels

  Leadership, Character, Long

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• I have always felt that the action most worth watching is not at the center of things but where edges meet. I like shorelines, weather fronts, international borders. There are interesting frictions and incongruities in these places, and often, if you stand at the point of tangency, you can see both sides better than if you were in the middle of either one.

  Anne Fadiman

  Weather, Interesting, Borders

  "The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down". Book by Anne Fadiman, 2012.

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• Worldly faces never look so worldly as at a funeral.

  George Eliot

  Death, Funeral, Looks

  George Eliot (1869). “Silas Marner and Scenes of Clerical Life”, p.318

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• And it can take a lifetime, a life of many years, to accept the incongruity of things: that a small moment can sit side by side with a big one, and become part of the same.

  Rachel Joyce

  Years, Small Moments, Sides

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• Humor may be defined as the kindly contemplation of the incongruities of life, and the artistic expression thereof.

  Stephen Leacock

  Humor, Expression, May

  Stephen Leacock (2012). “Feast of Stephen”, p.28, McClelland & Stewart

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• Music creates order out of chaos: for rhythm imposes unanimity upon the divergent, melody imposes continuity upon the disjointed, and harmony imposes compatibility upon the incongruous.

  Yehudi Menuhin

  Music, Order, Divergent

  Yehudi Menuhin (1972). “Theme and Variations”, New York : Stein and Day

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• Everything can happen, everything is possible and probable. Time and place do not exist; on a significant bases of reality, the imagination spins, weaving new patterns; a mixture of memories, experiences, free fancies, incongruities and improvisations.

  August Strindberg

  Memories, Reality, Imagination

  August Strindberg (2014). “Strindberg Plays: 2: Dream Play; Dance of Death; The Stronger”, p.175, A&C Black

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• On a throne at the center of a sense of humor sits a capacity for irony. All wit rests on a cheerful awareness of life's incongruities. It is a gentling awareness, and no politician without it should be allowed near power.

  George Will

  Cheerful, Thrones, Irony

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• Incongruities between self-efficacy and action may stem from misperceptions of task demands, as well as from faulty self-knowledge

  Albert Bandura

  Self, May, Tasks

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• Nature's law says that the strong must prevent the weak from living, but only in a newspaper article or textbook can this be packaged into a comprehensible thought. In the soup of everyday life, in the mixture of minutia from which human relations are woven, it is not a law. It is a logical incongruity when both strong and weak fall victim to their mutual relations, unconsciously subservient to some unknown guiding power that stands outside of life, irrelevant to man.

  Anton Chekhov

  Nature, Strong, Fall

  "A Doctor's Visit". Short story by Anton Chekhov, 1898.

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• Yet again, an ancient answer echoes across the centuries: Listen! Listen to stories! For what stories do, above all else, is hold up a mirror so that we can see ourselves. Stories are mirrors of human be-ing, reflecting back our very essence. In a story, we come to know precisely the both/and, mixed-upped-ness of our very being. In the mirror of another's story, we can discover our tragedy and our comedy-and therefore our very human-ness, the ambiguity and incongruity, that lie at the core of the human condition.

  Ernest Kurtz

  Lying, Echoes, Mirrors

  Ernest Kurtz, Katherine Ketcham (2009). “The Spirituality of Imperfection: Storytelling and the Search for Meaning”, p.63, Bantam

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• To get any reason out of the mass of incongruity we call human life, we have to transcend our reason, but we must do it scientifically, slowly, by regular practice, and we must cast off all superstition.

  Swami Vivekananda

  Practice, Superstitions, Reason

  Swami Vivekananda (2016). “Raja Yoga: Conquering the Internal Nature”, p.52, Advaita Ashrama

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• It becomes possible to admit that plainness may coexist with nobility of nature, and fine features with baseness; and yet to hold that mental and physical perfection are fundamentally connected, and will, when the present causes of incongruity have worked themselves out, be ever found united.

  Herbert Spencer

  Beauty, Perfection, May

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