Not surprisingly, historically speaking, dictators have always despised the use of humor, precisely because they recognize that their hold over people is ultimately fragile, based on force and lies, and humor undermines their rule.

Familiarity is the enemy of admiration.

Fear is the Fatal killer of Desire.

Fight any instinct to be humorless, for humorlessness is the worst of all absurdities.

Clichés are the enemy of taste.

They are the enemies of pleasure. They denounce dancing as one of the deadly sins. They are shocked at the wickedness of the waltz—the pollution of the polka. They are the enemies of the theatre. They slander actors and actresses. They hate them because they are rivals.

Pride,” said the hermit to his guests, “has destroyed an angel created for good. It is the stumbling-block against which the destinies of man strike. You cannot reason with pride, the principal of all the vices, since, by its very nature, the proud man refuses to listen to it...

... truth was a mortal enemy of beauty.

The greatest obstacle to pleasure is not pain; it is delusion. The principal enemies of human happiness are inordinate desire—the fantasy of attaining something that exceeds what the finite mortal world allows—and gnawing fear.

"Laughter, on the other hand, " Petrarch went on, "is an explosion that tears us away from the world and throws us back into our own cold solitude. Joking is a barrier between man and the world. Joking is the enemy of love and poetry. That's why I tell you yet again, and you want to keep in mind: Boccaccio doesn't understand love. Love can never be laughable. Love has nothing in common with laughter."

Self-conceit is the enemy of progress.

Fame is the enemy of instinct and spontaneity, the difference between what is said and what ought to be said, and the transformation of one person into two

Total absence of humor renders life impossible.

Taste is the enemy of a good death.