quotations about laughter
It would be a pity if laughter should ever become, like rhetoric and the arts, a habit. And it is in some sort a habit when it is not inevitable. If we ask ourselves why we laugh, we must confess that we laugh oftenest because--being amused--we intend to show that we are amused. We are right to make the sign, but a smile would be as sure a signal as a laugh, and more sincere; it would but be changing the convention; and the change would restore laughter itself to its own place. We have fallen into the way of using it to prove something--our sense of the goodness of the jest, to wit; but laughter should not thus be used, it should go free. It is not a demonstration, whether in logic, or--as the word demonstration is now generally used--in emotion; and we do ill to charge it with that office.
ALICE MEYNELL
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"Laughter", Ceres' Runaway & Other Essays
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Laughter is almost always accompanied by realization; it's the most fun way to learn.
ANDREW FRANK
"'Make Me Laugh' stand-up comedy contest comes to Norman for semifinals", The Oklahoma Daily, April 5, 2016
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Many people will laugh at the drop of a hat, especially if the man is still in it.
EVAN ESAR
20,000 Quips & Quotes
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Laughter is poison to fear.
GEORGE R. R. MARTIN
A Game of Thrones
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Love and laughter are the bricks we build our lives out of and the mortar that cements them together.
SUSAN ROSE BLAUNER
How I Stayed Alive When My Brain Was Trying to Kill Me
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Laughter is the language of the soul.
PABLO NERUDA
I Explain a Few Things
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The only medicine that needs no prescription, has no unpleasant taste, and costs no money is laughter.
EVAN ESAR
20,000 Quips & Quotes
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Laughing, if loud, ends with a deep sigh; and all pleasures have a sting in the tail, though they carry beauty in the face.
JEREMY TAYLOR
attributed, Day's Collacon
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A laughing fool ... seems born for nothing but to show his teeth.
GEORGE POPE MORRIS
The New York Mirror, Mar. 12, 1831
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There is nothing [that] disarms us like laughter.
HENRI BERGSON
Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic
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The house of laughter makes a house of woe.
EDWARD YOUNG
Night Thoughts
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In my mind, there is nothing so illiberal and so ill-bred as audible laughter.
PHILIP DORMER STANHOPE
letter to his son, Mar. 9, 1748
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To laugh is proper to man.
FRANCOIS RABELAIS
Gargantua
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Laughter appears to stand in need of an echo, Listen to it carefully: it is not an articulate, clear, well-defined sound; it is something which would fain be prolonged by reverberating from one to another, something beginning with a crash, to continue in successive rumblings, like thunder in a mountain.
HENRI BERGSON
Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic
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He who always prefaces his tale with laughter, is poised between impertinence and folly.
JOHANN KASPAR LAVATER
attributed, Day's Collacon
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Has the gift of laughter been withdrawn from me? I protest that I do still, at the age of forty-seven, laugh often and loud and long. But not, I believe, so long and loud and often as in my less smiling youth. And I am proud, nowadays, of laughing, and grateful to any one who makes me laugh. That is a bad sign. I no longer take laughter as a matter of course.
MAX BEERBOHM
"Laughter", And Even Now
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Anyone who takes himself too seriously always runs the risk of looking ridiculous; anyone who can consistently laugh at himself does not.
VACLAV HAVEL
Disturbing the Peace
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A laugh is worth a hundred groans in any market.
CHARLES LAMB
Bon-Mots
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The joke loses everything when the joker laughs himself.
FRIEDRICH SCHILLER
Fiesco's Conspiracy at Genoa
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Laughter is a pure, concentrated form of fault-tolerance; a much-needed way out when things go wrong.
SHEYNA GIFFORD
"My Life on (Simulated) Mars", Narratively, April 4, 2016
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