Just long enough for a joke

[every artist] arrives at the ultimate pinnacle of his greatness only when he comes to see himself and his art beneath him - when he knows how to laugh at himself.

Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals


To live in the world as though it were not the world, to respect the law and yet to stand above it, to have possessions as though "one possessed nothing," to renounce as though it were no renunciation, all these favourite and often formulated propositions of an exalted worldly wisdom, it is in the power of humour alone to make efficacious.

Eternity is a mere moment, just long enough for a joke.

Hermann Hesse, Steppenwolf