Chesterton on not taking yourself too seriously

SERIOUSNESS is not a virtue. It would be a heresy, but a much more sensible heresy, to say that seriousness is a vice. It is really a natural trend or lapse into taking one's self gravely, because it is the easiest thing to do. It is much easier to write a good Times leading article than a good joke in Punch. For solemnity flows out of men naturally, but laughter is a leap. It is easy to be heavy: hard to be light. Satan fell by the force of gravity.


From "Orthodoxy".


As an aside I used to read Punch, the great British humor magazine which expired a few years ago, when I was in high school. I already loved British sports cars, and was coming to love British writing. Later I got into GK Chesterton, Agatha Christie, CS Lewis, and PG Wodehouse. Thus an Irish Catholic became an Anglophile.