The defining function of the artist is to cherish consciousness.
Emotion is the surest arbiter of a poetic choice, and it is the priest of all supreme unions in the mind.
A joke is not a thing but a process, a trick you play on the listener's mind. You start him off toward a plausible goal, and then by a sudden twist you land him nowhere at all or just where he didn't expect to go.
Laughter is, after speech, the chief thing that holds society together.
A poet in history is divine, but a poet in the next room is a joke.