LAUGHTER QUOTES III
quotations about laughter
A laugh's the wisest, easiest answer to all that's queer.
HERMAN MELVILLE
Moby Dick
[I am] persuaded that every time a man smiles, but much more so when he laughs ... it adds something to this fragment of life.
LAURENCE STERNE
dedication, The Works of Laurence Sterne
Ridicule is a weak weapon, when leveled at a strong mind; But common men are cowards, and dread an empty laugh.
MARTIN FARQUHAR TUPPER
Proverbial Philosophy
Laugh now, cry later.
ERMA BOMBECK
The Grass Is Always Greener Over the Septic Tank
A laugh to be joyous must flow from a joyous heart, for without kindness there can be no true joy.
THOMAS CARLYLE
attributed, Day's Collacon
It is a strange world, a sad world, a world full of miseries, and woes, and troubles. And yet when King Laugh come, he make them all dance to the tune he play. Bleeding hearts, and dry bones of the churchyard, and tears that burn as they fall, all dance together to the music that he make with that smileless mouth of him. Ah, we men and women are like ropes drawn tight with strain that pull us different ways. Then tears come, and like the rain on the ropes, they brace us up, until perhaps the strain become too great, and we break. But King Laugh he come like the sunshine, and he ease off the strain again, and we bear to go on with our labor, what it may be.
BRAM STOKER
Dracula
When you've laughed like that with someone, it connects you at a humanity level.
JOHN CLEESE
interview, A. V. Club, February 5, 2008
O, glorious laughter! thou man-loving spirit, that for a time doth take the burden from the weary back, that doth lay salve to the weary feet, bruised and cut by flints and shards.
DOUGLAS JERROLD
The Wit and Opinions of Douglas Jerrold
I laugh until I weep
And weep until I smile
RAY BRADBURY
"Christ, Old Student in a New School"
He who laughs last didn't get the joke at first.
EVAN ESAR
20,000 Quips & Quotes
It's almost impossible to maintain any kind of distance or any sense of social hierarchy when you're just howling with laughter. Laughter is a force for democracy.
JOHN CLEESE
The Human Face
A laugh a day keeps the psychiatrist away.
EVAN ESAR
20,000 Quips & Quotes
Twenty years ago, ten years ago, I should have laughed, and have professed to you that I had merely smiled. A very young man is not content to be very young, nor even a young man to be young: he wants to share the dignity of his elders. There is no dignity in laughter, there is much of it in smiles. Laughter is but a joyous surrender, smiles give token of mature criticism. It may be that in the early ages of this world there was far more laughter than is to be heard now, and that aeons hence laughter will be obsolete, and smiles universal--every one, always, mildly, slightly, smiling. But it is less useful to speculate as to mankind's past and future than to observe men. And you will have observed with me in the club-room that young men at most times look solemn, whereas old men or men of middle age mostly smile; and also that those young men do often laugh loud and long among themselves, while we others--the gayest and best of us in the most favourable circumstances--seldom achieve more than our habitual act of smiling. Does the sound of that laughter jar on us? Do we liken it to the crackling of thorns under a pot? Let us do so. There is no cheerier sound. But let us not assume it to be the laughter of fools because we sit quiet. It is absurd to disapprove of what one envies, or to wish a good thing were no more because it has passed out of our possession.
MAX BEERBOHM
"Laughter", And Even Now
I hasten to laugh at everything, for fear of being obliged to weep.
PIERRE DE BEAUMARCHAIS
Barbier de Seville
Nothing is more silly than silly laughter.
CATULLUS
Carmina
Casting for a comedy is not that difficult because laughing is an involuntary thing. They make you laugh? That's the person you should cast.
DAVID CASPE
"The Oral History of 'Happy Endings'", Complex, April 5, 2016
No man who has once heartily and wholly laughed can be altogether irreclaimably bad.
THOMAS CARLYLE
Sartor Resartus
Laughter is the closest thing to the grace of God.
KARL BARTH
attributed, The Harper Book of Quotations
Take bread away from me, if you wish,
take air away, but
do not take from me your laughter.
PABLO NERUDA
"Your Laughter"
Laughter is free, free your laughter.
ANONYMOUS