LAUGHTER QUOTES III
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 was the most terrible weapon: you can kill anything with laughter.
YEVGENY ZAMYATIN
We
I prefer that laughter shall take me unawares. Only so can it master and dissolve me.
MAX BEERBOHM
"Laughter", And Even Now
A laugh a day keeps the psychiatrist away.
EVAN ESAR
20,000 Quips & Quotes
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
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
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
The immoderate cannot laugh moderately.
JOHANN KASPAR LAVATER
Aphorisms on Man
Laughter is free, free your laughter.
ANONYMOUS
Laughter isn't only about expressing joy. Sometimes we laugh out of embarrassment, sometimes from confusion, sometimes out of courtesy, and sometimes from nervousness. In the evil laugh, we celebrate the misfortune of others. Laughter can also express our personality -- the frivolous laugh, or the laugh of the loud and in-your-face extrovert versus the shy, withdrawn laugh of the introvert. Some people have a particular skill for the superior laugh. Does he who laughs last, laugh loudest?
STEVE ELLEN
"The lowdown on laughter: from boosting immunity to releasing tension", The Conversation, March 22, 2016
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
A laugh's the wisest, easiest answer to all that's queer.
HERMAN MELVILLE
Moby Dick
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
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
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
The fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.
CARL SAGAN
Broca's Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science
Laughing cheerfulness throws the light of day on all the paths of life.
JEAN PAUL RICHTER
attributed, Day's Collacon
Mirth is God's medicine. Everybody ought to bathe in it.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Royal Truths
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
O, you shall see him laugh till his face be like a wet cloak ill laid up.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Henry IV, Part II