LIFE - You can’t subdue me, because I refuse to take your discipline too seriously. When you try to hurt me, I laugh: and the laughter knows no pain. I appreciate your joys wherever I find them. Your sorrows neither discourage nor frighten me, for there is laughter in my soul.

Temporary defeat does not make me sad. I simply set music to the words of defeat and turn it into a song. Your tears are not for me. I like laughter much better. And because I like it, I use it as a substitute for grief and sorrow and pain and disappointment.

Life, you are a fickle trickster. Don’t deny it. You slipped this emotion of love into my heart, so that you might use it as a thorn with which to prick my soul. But I learned to dodge your trap with laughter. You tried to lure me with the desire for gold. But I have fooled you by following the trail which leads to knowledge instead.

You induced me to build beautiful friendships, then convert my friends to enemies so you may harden my heart. But I sidestepped your fickleness by laughing off your attempts and selecting new friends in my own way.

You caused men to cheat me at trade so I will become distrustful. But I win again because I possess one precious asset which no man can steal. It is the power to think my own thoughts and to be myself. You threaten me with death. But to me death is nothing worse than a long peaceful sleep, and sleep is the sweetest of human experiences: excepting laughter.

You build a fire of hope in my heart, then sprinkle water on the flames. But I can go you one better by rekindling the fire - and I laugh at you once more.

Life, you are licked as far as I’m concerned. Because you have nothing that can lure me away from laughter, and you are powerless to scare me into submission.

To a life of laughter, then: I raise my cup of cheer!