It now costs more to amuse a child than it once did to educate his father.
There are amusing people who do not interest, and interesting people who do not amuse
Hell is a place where you have nothing to do but amuse yourself.
The main obligation is to amuse yourself.
You make 'em, I amuse 'em. [children]
What people really want is not to make something funny, but to make something amusing - which, in many ways, is the opposite of funny. To amuse someone is to eliminate discomfort and awkwardness, kind of like a massage for the brain, while to be funny is to point out awkwardness and discomfort. Everyone thinks they want funny, but they really want amusement.
And another thing about German symphonic development. I tell you, our cold kvass soup is a horror to the Germans, and yet we eat it with pleasure. And their cold cherry soup is a horror to us, and yet it sends a German into ecstacy. In short, symphonic development is just like German philosophy and soup-all worked out and systematized. When a German thinks, he reasons his way to a conclusion. Our Russian brother, on the other hand, starts with a conclusion and then might amuse himself with some reasoning.
People in general do not willingly read if they have anything else to amuse them.
Tea's proper use is to amuse the idle, and relax the studious, and dilute the full meals of those who cannot use exercise, and will not use abstinence.
I've never tried to drive my career in any particular direction. I've always been an in-the-moment, live-for-today guy. I've never had a goal, and nearly everything I've done has been an accident. I just play to me, and if I can amuse myself, I consider it a victory.
To get into the best society, nowadays, one has either to feed people, amuse people, or shock people - that is all!
When an artist leaves his work to amuse people, he loses his time and their respect. If people are to be amused by artists, it must be by employing them in their legitimate occupation.
I believe your friends Misters Fred and George Weasley were responsible for trying to send you a toilet seat. No doubt they thought it would amuse you.
Men first feel necessity, then look for utility, next attend to comfort, still later amuse themselves with pleasure, thence grow dissolute in luxury, and finally go mad and waste their substance.
Teach to the young, men's enduring truths, and let the learned amuse themselves with their passing errors.
If people thought more, we'd all have less to amuse us.