LAUGHTER QUOTES II
quotations about laughter
The immoderate cannot laugh moderately.
JOHANN KASPAR LAVATER
Aphorisms on Man
Mirth is God's medicine. Everybody ought to bathe in it.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Royal Truths
Laughing cheerfulness throws the light of day on all the paths of life.
JEAN PAUL RICHTER
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
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
O, you shall see him laugh till his face be like a wet cloak ill laid up.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Henry IV, Part II
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
Laugh now, cry later.
ERMA BOMBECK
The Grass Is Always Greener Over the Septic Tank
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
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
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
Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand.
MARK TWAIN
The Mysterious Stranger
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
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
You grow up the day you have your first real laugh -- at yourself.
ETHEL BARRYMORE
The Tell Tale, 1940
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 hasten to laugh at everything, for fear of being obliged to weep.
PIERRE DE BEAUMARCHAIS
Barbier de Seville
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
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