Human life is basically a comedy. Even its tragedies often seem comic to the spectator, and not infrequently they actually have comic touches to the victim. Happiness probably consists largely in the capacity to detect and relish them. A man who can laugh, if only at himself, is never really miserable.
When you take things too seriously, you get old. You have to be silly. Whenever people say, 'Hey, man, are you ever going to grow up?' That's when you know you're doing things right.
What is really important to me is a sense of humour and a mischief about life. Life is just too boring otherwise.
What I’ve learned along the way is that existence is cosmic theatre, but paradoxically, we should play our roles to the absolute best of our ability while having the wisdom not to take them too seriously.
Have fun. I don't kid myself. Life is very fragile, and success doesn't change that. If anything, success makes it more fragile. Anything can change, without warning, and that's why I try not to take any of what's happened too seriously.
It is hard work and great art to make life not so serious.
But whatever you do, take neither yourselves nor your fellow-creatures too seriously. There is tragedy enough in our daily routine, but there is room too for a keen sense of the absurdities and incongruities of life, and in the shifting panorama no one sees better than the doctor the perennial sameness of men’s ways.
Humanity takes itself too seriously. It is the world's original sin. If the cave-man had known how to laugh, History would have been different.
