Press

Famous quotes containing the word press:

    If thou be invited of a mighty man, withdraw thyself, and so much the more will he invite thee. Press thou not upon him, lest thou be put back; stand not far off, lest thou be forgotten.
    Apocrypha. Ecclesiasticus 13:9-10.

    While it may not heighten our sympathy, wit widens our horizons by its flashes, revealing remote hidden affiliations and drawing laughter from far afield; humor, in contrast, strikes up fellow feeling, and though it does not leap so much across time and space, enriches our insight into the universal in familiar things, lending it a local habitation and a name.
    —Marie Collins Swabey. Comic Laughter, ch. 5, Yale University Press (1961)

    Both gossip and joking are intrinsically valuable activities. Both are essentially social activities that strengthen interpersonal bonds—we do not tell jokes and gossip to ourselves. As popular activities that evade social restrictions, they often refer to topics that are inaccessible to serious public discussion. Gossip and joking often appear together: when we gossip we usually tell jokes and when we are joking we often gossip as well.
    Aaron Ben-Ze’Ev, Israeli philosopher. “The Vindication of Gossip,” Good Gossip, University Press of Kansas (1994)