LAUGHTER QUOTES IV
quotations about laughter
Mirth is God's medicine. Everybody ought to bathe in it.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Royal Truths
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
Laugh now, cry later.
ERMA BOMBECK
The Grass Is Always Greener Over the Septic Tank
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
[I am] persuaded that every time a man smiles, but much more so when he laughs ... it adds something to this fragment of life.
LAURENCE STERNE
dedication, The Works of Laurence Sterne
I laugh until I weep
And weep until I smile
RAY BRADBURY
"Christ, Old Student in a New School"
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
You can turn painful situations around through laughter. If you can find humor in anything, even poverty, you can survive it.
BILL COSBY
attributed, Humor Me
No man who has once heartily and wholly laughed can be altogether irreclaimably bad.
THOMAS CARLYLE
Sartor Resartus
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
I'd rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints.
BILLY JOEL
"Only the Good Die Young"
Casting for a comedy is not that difficult because laughing is an involuntary thing. They make you laugh? That's the person you should cast.
DAVID CASPE
"The Oral History of 'Happy Endings'", Complex, April 5, 2016
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
Do you know what I like about comedy? You can't laugh and be afraid at the same time -- of anything. If you're laughing, I defy you to be afraid.
STEPHEN COLBERT
interview, Parade Magazine, Sep. 23, 2007
Nothing is more silly than silly laughter.
CATULLUS
Carmina
You grow up the day you have your first real laugh -- at yourself.
ETHEL BARRYMORE
The Tell Tale, 1940
A hearty laugh lengthens your life.
SWEDISH PROVERB
How many people are actually 'laughing out loud' when they send LOL? These days, I'd argue that LOL (commonly without caps) barely indicates an internal, silent chuckle, never mind an uproarious, audible guffaw.
GRETCHEN MCCULLOCH
"How many people are actually 'laughing out loud' when they send LOL?", Slate, May 23, 2014
A wonderful thing about true laughter is that it just destroys any kind of system of dividing people.
JOHN CLEESE
interview, A. V. Club, February 5, 2008
Comedy naturally wears itself out--destroys the very food on which it lives; and by constantly and successfully exposing the follies and weaknesses of mankind to ridicule, in the end leaves itself nothing worth laughing at.
WILLIAM HAZLITT
"On Modern Comedy", The Round Table