考研英语听力基本功训练1: Passage23

Humor,which ought to give rise to only the most light-hearted and gay feeling

can often stir to up vehemence and animosit

Evidently it is dearer to us than we realiz

Men will take almost any kind of criticism except the observation that they have no sense of humo

A man will admit to being a coward or a liar or a thief or a poor mechanic or a bad swimme

but tell him he has a dreadful sense of humor and you might as well have slandered his mothe

Even if he is civilized enough to pretend to make light of your statemen

he will secretly believe that he has not only a good sense of humor but one superior to mos

He has,in other words,a completely blind spot on the subjec

This is all the more surprising when you consider that not one man in ten million can give you any kind of intelligent answer as to what humor is or why he laughs