>The tenth degree of humility is that he be not ready and

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>The tenth degree of humility is that he be not ready and quick to laugh, for it is written, "The fool lifts up his voice in laughter" (Eccles. 21:23).

>The eleventh degree of humility is that when a monk speaks he do so gently and without laughter, humbly and seriously, in few and sensible words, and that he be not noisy in his speech. It is written, "A wise man is known by the fewness of his words" (Sextus, Enchidirion, 134 or 145).

And from the Oriental Tradition:

>The multitude of men look satisfied and pleased; as if enjoying a full banquet, as if mounted on a tower in spring. I alone seem listless and still, my desires having as yet given no indication of their presence. I am like an infant which has not yet smiled. I look dejected and forlorn, as if I had no home to go to.

From St. Augustine:

>For what pleasure hath it to see in a mangled carcass, what will make you shudder? And yet if it be lying near, they [the masses] flock thither, to be made sad, and to turn pale... From this disease in curiosity are all those strange sights exhibited in the theatre. Hence men go on to search out the hidden powers of nature (which is beside our end), which to know profits not, and wherein men desire nothing but to know.

To delight in the misfortune of others is folly. For what does it say about you, that the substance of your life, around which you construct your identity, comes from without, from the spectacles of your time, and not from within? You are, then, not a product of your own deliberation, not an exercise of your own will, but merely a reactive leech, sustained only by calamity, by vulgarity, by sensuality. You only know yourself by what you feel and what you see. Quick to laugh, quick to worry, quick to anger, like a child. For it is a sign of vulgarity, to jump at every opportunity to make yourself known, to comment on every report of the day.