Source identified1
Image design Rose Studio
Read & copy
“There are two insults which no human being will endure: the assertion that he hasn’t a sense of humor, and the doubly impertinent assertion that he has never known trouble.”
Meaning & context
Lewis satirizes two kinds of self-image people defend fiercely: being able to laugh and believing their own life has contained genuine difficulty.
Source details
Main Street, Project Gutenberg #543. The narrator gives this comic generalization immediately before Carol reacts angrily to Vida’s suggestion that she has not suffered; it is satirical fiction, not a psychological finding about every person.