Art & Creativity Quote by David Seabury

Good humor, Seabury insists, is less like eye color and more like piano: you do not simply have it, you cultivate it. The line quietly refuses a flattering modern myth that temperament is destiny and that some people are just "naturally positive". By calling good humor an art, he drags it out of the moral pantry (where we store traits like kindness, grit, and patience) and puts it in the workshop, alongside habits, technique, and repetition.

The subtext is democratic and mildly chastening. If good humor is practice, then it is available to more people than the lucky few with sunny wiring, but it also becomes your responsibility. You cannot outsource it to personality, or excuse chronic irritability as authenticity. The word "practice" matters: it suggests failure, daily recommitment, and the kind of discipline we admire in musicians and athletes, not in the self-appointed "realists" who confuse cynicism with insight.

Seabury's context helps explain the edge. As a psychologist working through the early 20th century, he sits in a period fascinated by self-mastery: habit formation, adjustment, and the idea that mental health can be trained, not merely treated. Read that way, "good humor" isn't just being funny; it's an emotional stance under pressure, a social skill that lubricates family life, offices, and public spaces. Seabury frames it as craft because he knows moods are contagious - and because craft implies choice.