LAUGHTER QUOTES II
quotations about laughter
Mirth is God's medicine. Everybody ought to bathe in it.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Royal Truths
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
If ever the day should come when men and women shall be content to signal their perception of humour by the natural smile, and shall keep the laugh for its own unpremeditated act, shall laugh seldom, and simply, and not thrice at the same thing--once for foolish surprise, and twice for tardy intelligence, and thrice to let it be known that they are amused--then it may be time to persuade this laughing nation not to laugh so loud as it is wont in public. The theatre audiences of louder-speaking nations laugh lower than ours. The laugh that is chiefly a signal of the laugher's sense of the ridiculous is necessarily loud; and it has the disadvantage of covering what we may perhaps wish to hear from the actors. It is a public laugh, and no ordinary citizen is called upon for a public laugh. He may laugh in public, but let it be with private laughter there.
ALICE MEYNELL
"Laughter", Ceres' Runaway & Other Essays
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
He who laughs last didn't get the joke at first.
EVAN ESAR
20,000 Quips & Quotes
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
Laughing cheerfulness throws the light of day on all the paths of life.
JEAN PAUL RICHTER
attributed, Day's Collacon
The immoderate cannot laugh moderately.
JOHANN KASPAR LAVATER
Aphorisms on Man
Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand.
MARK TWAIN
The Mysterious Stranger
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
O, you shall see him laugh till his face be like a wet cloak ill laid up.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Henry IV, Part II
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"
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
Laugh now, cry later.
ERMA BOMBECK
The Grass Is Always Greener Over the Septic Tank
You grow up the day you have your first real laugh -- at yourself.
ETHEL BARRYMORE
The Tell Tale, 1940
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 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 is the closest thing to the grace of God.
KARL BARTH
attributed, The Harper Book of Quotations
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