Bertrand Russell's best

It is pleasant news that Professor Egner is publishing a revision of the book Bertrand Russell's Best. The skill and the impartiality with which he made his selections, producing, thereby a volume which one may hope can be read without pain and without excessive mental exertion, seem to me admirable. I should like to reiterate, however, what I said in The Preface to the volume edited by Professor Robert E. Egner and Mr Lester E. Denonn called The Basic Writings of Bertrand Russell. I said there: I should not wish to be thought in earnest only when I am solemn.'
The longer I have lived, the more I have come too suspect solemnity and to see in it - not always, but frequently - a cloak for a humbug. What is most lacking in the modern world is genial, good-natured tolerance; and what is most hostile to this is a harsh and dogmatic morality which condemns the majority of the human race as reprobates. Against solemnity, the best weapon is wit. Most other weapons produce only another dogmatic, sectarian solemnity. I have tried to avoid this danger, though I must confess that I have not always been successful in this endeavour.