LAUGHTER QUOTES II
quotations about laughter
Laughter gives us distance. It allows us to step back from an event, deal with it and then move on.
BOB NEWHART
attributed, Standup Comedian: The Secret and Beyond
Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion.... I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning do to do afterward.
KURT VONNEGUT
Palm Sunday
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
Laughter has been claimed to do pretty much everything, from reducing stress to helping cure cancer. Most major children's hospitals have clown doctors cheering up kids. There is a special brand of yoga -- Hasyayoga -- that incorporates laughter. We have laughter clubs that espouse the health benefits of laughing as an exercise -- no jokes, just spontaneous mirth.
STEVE ELLEN
"The lowdown on laughter: from boosting immunity to releasing tension", The Conversation, March 22, 2016
I have one of those very loud, stupid laughs. I mean if I ever sat behind myself in a movie or something, I'd probably lean over and tell myself to please shut up.
J. D. SALINGER
The Catcher in the Rye
He is a wise man who always knows what to laugh at, and a bold man that always dare laugh at what is laughable.
EDWARD PARSONS DAY
Day's Collacon
Laughter was the most terrible weapon: you can kill anything with laughter.
YEVGENY ZAMYATIN
We
Laughter is the closest thing to the grace of God.
KARL BARTH
attributed, The Harper Book of Quotations
It is a good thing to laugh, at any rate; and if a straw can tickle a man, it is an instrument of happiness.
JOHN DRYDEN
"A Parallel of Poetry and Painting", Select Essays on the Belles Lettres
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 at your friends, and if your friends are sore;
So much the better, you may laugh the more.
ALEXANDER POPE
Epilogue to Satire
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
Laughter was absent from her life. Unless strategic or issued in triumph at some further depth she'd managed to go down to.
GLEN DUNCAN
By Blood We Live
The immoderate cannot laugh moderately.
JOHANN KASPAR LAVATER
Aphorisms on Man
Strange, when you come to think of it, that of all the countless folk who have lived before our time on this planet not one is known in history or in legend as having died of laughter. Strange, too, that not to one of all the characters in romance has such an end been allotted. Has it ever struck you what a chance Shakespeare missed when he was finishing the Second Part of King Henry the Fourth? Falstaff was not the man to stand cowed and bowed while the new young king lectured him and cast him off. Little by little, as Hal proceeded in that portentous allocution, the humour of the situation would have mastered old Sir John. His face, blank with surprise at first, would presently have glowed and widened, and his whole bulk have begun to quiver. Lest he should miss one word, he would have mastered himself. But the final words would have been the signal for release of all the roars pent up in him; the welkin would have rung; the roars, belike, would have gradually subsided in dreadful rumblings of more than utterable or conquerable mirth. Thus and thus only might his life have been rounded off with dramatic fitness, secundum ipsius naturam. He never should have been left to babble of green fields and die 'an it had been any christom child.'
MAX BEERBOHM
"Laughter", And Even Now
When you've laughed like that with someone, it connects you at a humanity level.
JOHN CLEESE
interview, A. V. Club, February 5, 2008
Remember laughter. You'll need it even in the blessed isles of Ever After.
JAMES THURBER
13 Clocks
The man who laughs has simply not yet had the terrible news.
BERTOLT BRECHT
"To Those Born Later"
Take bread away from me, if you wish,
take air away, but
do not take from me your laughter.
PABLO NERUDA
"Your Laughter"
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