[71]
It is easy
to make fun of folly, for folly is laughable in itself;
but we may improve such jests by adding something
of our own. Titius Maximus put a foolish question
to Campatius, who was leaving the theatre, when he
asked him if he had been watching the play. “No,”
replied Campatius, “I was playing ball in the stalls,”
whereby lie made the question seem even more
foolish than it actually was.
Quintilian. With An English Translation. Harold Edgeworth Butler. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1921.
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