LAUGHTER QUOTES III
quotations about laughter
Laugh at your friends, and if your friends are sore;
So much the better, you may laugh the more.
ALEXANDER POPE
Epilogue to Satire
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
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
The problem is that we live in an uptight country. Why don't we just laugh at ourselves? We are funny. Gays are funny. Straights are funny. Women are funny. Men are funny. We are all funny, and we all do funny things. Let's laugh about it.
BOB NEWHART
I Shouldn't Even Be Doing This
People who stop laughing are always the ones who get hurt.
JOSH SUNDQUIST
Just Don't Fall
Only in this world do we laugh: in hell, it won't be possible; and in heaven, it won't be proper.
JULES RENARD
attributed, The Comic Encyclopedia
Laughing cheerfulness throws the light of day on all the paths of life.
JEAN PAUL RICHTER
attributed, Day's Collacon
Laugh, and be fat, sir, your penance is known.
They that love mirth, let them heartily drink,
'Tis the only receipt to make sorrow sink.
BEN JONSON
"The Penates", Masques and Entertainments
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
It may be remarked in general, that the laugh of men of wit is for the most part but a feint, constrained kind of half-laugh, as such persons are never without some diffidence about them; but that of fools is the most honest, natural, open laugh in the world.
RICHARD STEELE
The Guardian, Apr. 14, 1713
In regard to health care, we've all heard that laughter is the best medicine. Laughter is also our least costly healthcare option.
DANNY MURPHY
"If elected president, I promise a laugh in every belly!", The Florida Times-Union, April 1, 2016
I know not all that may be coming, but be it what it will, I'll go to it laughing.
HERMAN MELVILLE
Moby Dick
I hasten to laugh at everything, for fear of being obliged to weep.
PIERRE DE BEAUMARCHAIS
Barbier de Seville
He who laughs last didn't get the joke at first.
EVAN ESAR
20,000 Quips & Quotes
You can't deny laughter; when it comes, it plops down in your favorite chair and stays as long as it wants.
STEPHEN KING
Hearts in Atlantis
Nothing is more silly than silly laughter.
CATULLUS
Carmina
No man who has once heartily and wholly laughed can be altogether irreclaimably bad.
THOMAS CARLYLE
Sartor Resartus
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
I prefer that laughter shall take me unawares. Only so can it master and dissolve me.
MAX BEERBOHM
"Laughter", And Even Now
Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps; for he is the only animal that is struck with the difference between what things are, and what they ought to be.
WILLIAM HAZLITT
Lectures on the English Comic Writers