Through humor you can soften some of the worst blows that life delivers. And once you find laughter no matter how painful your situation might be you can survive it.

Cruelty is softened by fear not pity.

Do not let your bachelor ways crystallize so that you can't soften them when you come to have a wife and a family of your own.

No advance in wealth no softening of manners no reform or revolution has ever brought human equality a millimeter nearer.

Give us grace and strength to forbear and to persevere. Give us courage and gaiety and the quiet mind spare to us our friends soften to us our enemies.

The best way to win against the intolerable is to tolerate them for this they have seldom dealt with. Your indulgence may soften their malice and open their eyes to more honorable ways.

Poor Georgia O'Keeffe. Death didn't soften the opinions of the art world toward her paintings.

Largely this is a class thing - writers tend to be cosseted little middle-class kiddies who think that the world owes them a royalty cheque. But just doing it - being in your room for years on end locked in your head alone with invented ghosts - it weakens and softens the body. And I know I can't just live in my head.

It is well for the world that in most of us by the age of thirty the character has set like plaster and will never soften again.