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When we can begin to take our failures nonseriously, it means we are ceasing to be afraid of them. It is of immense importance to learn to laugh at ourselves.

— Katherine Mansfield

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More quotes by Katherine Mansfield

I always felt that the great high privilege, relief and comfort of friendship was that one had to explain nothing.

Katherine Mansfield : A Biography (1953)

To acknowledge the presence of fear is to give birth to failure.

By health I mean the power to live a full, adult, living, breathing life in close contact with what I love — the earth and the wonders thereof — the sea — the sun.

I want, by understanding myself, to understand others.

I have made it a rule of my life never to regret and never to look back. Regret is an appalling waste of energy, and no one who intends to become a writer can afford to indulge in it. You can't get it into shape; you can't build on it; it's only good for wallowing in.

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Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods.

Albert Einstein Essay to Leo Baeck (1953)

Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps; for he is the only animal that is struck with the difference between what things are, and what they ought to be.

William Hazlitt Lectures on the English Comic Writers (1819)

Laughter is the closest thing to the grace of God.

Karl Barth The Harper Book of Quotations (1993)

Care to our coffin adds a nail, no doubt,
And every grin so merry draws one out.

John Wolcot

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Katherine Mansfield (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.