Leon Eisenberg - Humor

Humor

Among his friends and professional colleagues, Leon Eisenberg was known for his humor and friendly wit which he shared in lectures, publications, and even as Recording Secretary for the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (sometimes in the forum of haiku).

Collecting his humor is difficult (often it was in personal e-mails), but many agree that a few typical scenarios recurred:

  • Several persons of different social backgrounds involved in a difficult, odd, or even humorous situation, usually with a Jewish psychiatrist or a rabbi .
  • A very wise person involved with something very unusual .
  • A well-known historical event .
  • Poetry (often haiku)

Close friends (and fans) described his stories as customized for each occasion (so they never tired of hearing the same stories repeated because, with customization, they never were the same story or joke).

Read more about this topic:  Leon Eisenberg

Famous quotes containing the word humor:

    Nine-tenths of the value of a sense of humor in writing is not in the things it makes one write but in the things it keeps one from writing. It is especially valuable in this respect in serious writing, and no one without a sense of humor should ever write seriously. For without knowing what is funny, one is constantly in danger of being funny without knowing it.
    Robert Benchley (1889–1945)

    Carlyle’s humor is vigorous and titanic, and has more sense in it than the sober philosophy of many another. It is not to be disposed of by laughter and smiles merely; it gets to be too serious for that: only they may laugh who are not hit by it.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    Everything human is pathetic. The secret source of Humor itself is not joy but sorrow. There is no humor in heaven.
    Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)